


stay here tonight (if you want me)

by kotaface (aveyune23)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Action/Thriller, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Smut, F/M, Internal Conflict, Oppressive regimes, Romance, SOLDIER!Cloud, Shameless Smut, Shinra Employee!Tifa, Some Humor, Testing of Loyalties, These two idiots have no chill, Tifa the Scientist, modern-ish AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25495756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aveyune23/pseuds/kotaface
Summary: This assignment was supposed to be a piece of cake. His ticket to SOLDIER 1st Class. Play bodyguard for a Shinra Lab Coat for a while, exceed expectations, and reap the benefits.He should have known better. Nothing's ever been easy when it comes to Tifa Lockhart.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 141
Kudos: 253





	1. Assignment

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to the wonderful people on the Final Heaven and Once Upon A Star servers for their support, encouragement, and willingness to let me scream every now and then about how Writing is Hard.

Tifa gets to her father’s house on Sunday morning at the usual time. He lives only a block away from her apartment so she walks. It’s a chance to get some sun and some fresh air — or at least something like it. The haze and smell of the industrial sectors aren’t as strong over the residential neighborhoods, but sometimes, when the wind shifts… She exhales sharply to clear the traces of smoke and memory from her nose. Breakfast with Papa is full of enough memories as it is.

He transferred to work in Midgar a year and a half ago. He had a hard time being on his own after she left for university in Midgar, and it got worse after she graduated and took a job at Company Headquarters. Now that he's in the city, they see each other all the time, but traditions are traditions.

Mom always made pancakes on Sundays.

As Tifa cooks breakfast for them in the tiny kitchen, her dad makes small talk. He asks about her week, her current projects, and she responds in kind. But there’s an undercurrent of tension between them. She knows why, but she doesn’t want to be the one to bring it up. She needs to know how he feels about it first.

“I’m sure you’ve heard by now,” her dad finally says as they sit down at the table. “About Reactor 1.”

Tifa takes a sip of her coffee and nods. The explosion had woken her up, the echoes of the bomb blast rattling the windows of her apartment in Sector 7. Like everyone else on the block, she had run out into the street to see what was happening. The smoke was visible from her neighborhood even though it was a sector and a half away, lit from beneath by floodlights and the green glow of vaporized mako. Everyone had been confused and outraged. They still were. Sector police had shown up shortly after the explosion to usher everyone back into their homes. The questions her neighbors had last night were being answered on the news this morning.

_Sector 1 Mako Reactor bombing — 14 killed, dozens more wounded._

_Eco-terrorist group Avalanche claiming responsibility._

_President Shinra to host press conference at 9AM to address further threats issued by the anti-Shinra organization._

“I received a notice from the department executives early this morning,” her father goes on. “Tifa, are you listening?”

She blinks the memory of last night away and looks over. Her father is watching her with concern, the creases above his brow and around his mouth more pronounced. She sets down her mug and gives him a small smile.

“Sorry. You got a notice…?”

“Yes. From the department head. About this group. Avalanche.”

A sudden tremor goes through her and she wraps her hands around her mug to hide it.

“Apparently when they claimed responsibility for the attack, they made additional threats as well.”

Tifa frowns into her coffee, willing the ripples in it to stop, before she asks him, “What kind of threats?”

Her father gives her a strange look then, something that pulls down the corners of his mouth and darkens his eyes. It vanishes as quickly as it appears, though, so she doesn’t get the chance to decipher what it means.

“They said that if the Company doesn’t start shutting down reactors immediately, there will be another attack. One that’s in a more populated Sector.”

Her throat closes up and she stares at him, speechless. _Wasn’t one enough?_

“Why would they do that?” she finally manages to ask.

He shakes his head. “They’re criminals, Tifa. Terrorists with a ridiculous dogma about saving the Planet. Lunatics, all of them.” He waves his hand, dismissing the remaining obvious. “The Company will be increasing security everywhere. I was told this morning that the Mako Energy Division will be assigned security details as a precaution.”

Her eyebrows go up in surprise. “Everyone? Why? That seems a bit excessive.” The Mako Energy Division employs hundreds of people within the larger Department of Energy, but most of them don’t work directly with the reactors. Entire offices are dedicated to other things like fuel acquisition, infrastructure, and finance. 

“Perhaps,” her father says. “Maybe not everyone. But certainly those of us who work with mako.”

 _‘Us,_ she notices. _He said ‘us.’_

“So you’ll have a bodyguard?” Tifa asks, shoving his words and their implications away. “That’s good, I’m glad they’re looking after your safety.” She hides her face in her coffee cup so that he doesn’t see her expression shift. She can’t bear the thought of anything happening to her father. If something did, if he got hurt… Her stomach twists in fear but she takes a deep breath. He’ll be fine. 

“And you, too.”

Tifa freezes, hands clenching around her mug. 

“Me? Why? I don’t work at the reactors.”

“But you do work with mako,” he says gently.

She wants to argue that no, she doesn’t, not really. She works in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Sustainability. Her job is finding ways to keep the electricity flowing long-term using as few resources as possible. Currently, yes, that resource is mako, but the bulk of her work is dedicated to finding alternatives. Or at least, that’s what her job title implies.

“Yes, but not — not _with_ mako. You know that.” She shakes her head at how ridiculous it sounds.

“The Company thinks—”

“Besides, I can take care of myself.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Papa, I’m not important enough to need a bodyguard.”

“Of course you are, Tifa.”

She sighs. “Papa…”

“Tifa, I won’t risk losing you,” he tells her, his voice shaking. “Even if you don’t think you’re important to the company, you’re important to me.”

Guilt squeezes her heart like a fist. She didn’t call him last night, she realizes. Her father doesn’t inspect reactors on weekends, so she had no reason to worry. Tifa swallows and blinks away the pinpricks of tears in the corners of her eyes. “I know,” she says quietly. “But really, is it —?”

“Do it for me, if not for yourself. Please.”

All the breath goes out of her in a long sigh. She finishes her coffee before she looks at him again.

“Okay. Of course.”

He smiles at her then, and it looks like his eyes may have welled up, too. Tifa smiles back and they dig into their pancakes. And when breakfast is over and she gets up to put her dishes in the sink, she makes sure he doesn’t see her place the pieces of her coffee cup in the trash. It had cracked at some point during their discussion — her death grip on it was the only thing that kept it together. 

* * *

Cloud lowers his gun as the last enemy soldier disintegrates into code. His stats for this session pop up in the corner of his vision. He reads them, growls, and yanks the VR headset off, ending the simulation. The lights come back up as he scrubs his hand through his hair and over his face, and then he realizes someone is slow clapping behind him. He doesn’t have to guess who.

“You look disappointed,” Zack calls from the door. Cloud counts to three before he turns and moves towards the exit, dumping the headset and the sim firearm onto the console as he goes.

“That’s one word for it,” he grumbles back.

Zack grins at him and claps a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, man. I’ve seen your scores. Your name has a permanent address at the top of the leader board.”

Cloud shrugs him off. “The top of the 2nd Class leader board.” He focuses on reequipping himself, securing his firearm against his hip before shoving his arms into his jacket and facing his friend. Zack is still giving him that look, though. The one that looks suspiciously like pity. He sighs.

“Forget it.”

Naturally, Zack doesn’t. At least he drops the cheery attitude.

“You’re not still hung up on your last exam, are you?”

Cloud shakes his head. Noticing how Zack’s mouth thins, he decides it’s time to evacuate. He could use a coffee and something to eat, and the only time Zack willingly shuts up is when there’s food. But reality slaps him in the face when they leave the combat simulator. The lobby outside is deserted. On a normal morning, this floor is packed, with employees scattered at all the tables and kiosks to meet over coffee or check email. Other Public Safety personnel like him and Zack should be lining up for their turn in the Sims. But this isn’t a normal morning.

“Everybody’s down at the press conference,” Zack says. Cloud nods in response. The President is on air right now to talk about what happened. 14 Shinra employees killed and dozens more injured after a bunch of Planet-hugging psychos planted a bomb in the Sector 1 Reactor. He was working a red-eye shift last night, and when the dispatch blared in his earpiece he was on his feet and at the heels of his commanding officer in minutes, waiting to be sent out. But they didn’t send him anywhere. He was told to stay put. His shift was almost over, he could ‘sit this one out,’ get some rest.

A mako reactor was blown sky high in the middle of the night and they told him to ‘sit this one out.’

He’s been ‘sitting it out’ in the Combat Sim ever since.

“Hey, you okay?”

Cloud brushes him off. “Yeah. Are you hungry? I could use some food.”

Zack lights up, as expected. “Always,” he says, and they head to the elevators. Neither of them speaks as they wait for the car, but after the door closes and the button for the 49th floor has been punched, Zack faces him.

“They’re giving everyone new assignments,” he begins. Cloud grunts, waiting for the other boot to drop. He knows Zack was dispatched to Sector 1 last night. He hasn’t said so, but he doesn’t have to. Zack’s SOLDIER 1st Class. He’d be the first on the scene of a bombing.

It’s stupid, but he’s jealous.

“The President and the Directors ordered a ton of new security. Anyone that works in, on, or around mako reactors are now under 24-hour guard.”

Cloud raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

Zack shrugs. “Maybe they’re worried about those crazies taking out the engineers. Or that they’ll use somebody for information.” He waves his hand. “The why doesn’t matter. I’m telling you because you’ve been assigned to an employee.”

That makes him jerk his head around. Zack’s expression is 100% serious. Cloud feels his pulse quicken. _This could be his chance—_

“Who?” He tries not to sound too eager.

“Dunno. I’m supposed to be taking you to the Commander to find out.”

They stare at each other for a split-second, and then Cloud punches a different floor into the console. Zack laughs and swipes his key card across the pad when it flashes for confirmation.

SOLDIER Command is on the 51st floor. Only the Commanders and 1st Class SOLDIERs have unlimited access, which means lower ranks like Cloud require an escort if they’re called to a meeting there. It occurs to him that division-wide assignments are usually issued two floors down, in the SOLDIER briefing room, but he brushes it off. Being given an assignment in the Commander’s office is a big deal.

When the elevator pings and the doors slide open, Cloud tries not to look around wide-eyed like he’s surprised at being there. He rolls his shoulders back and stands to his full height, straightens his jacket — and then Zack is dusting off his shoulders and fucking with his hair like it needs fixing.

“Dude what the hell—?” he hisses, shoving him off.

“Hey! Just making sure you look good.” Zack’s grin fades to a genuine smile. “I know this is a big deal for you.”

Cloud counts to three and sighs. “Thanks.”

And just like that, Zack is grinning again. “Come on, office is this way.”

The 51st floor is almost painfully spare compared to the rest of Shinra HQ, but Cloud isn’t too surprised. SOLDIER isn’t exactly about extravagance. It’s a military branch, an elite force trained for combat, covert work, for doing what the regular Public Safety personnel can’t to keep the peace. Plush carpets and expensive vases don’t mean anything to people like them. Still, after being in the Combat Sim for so long, the grays and glass are blending into one and throwing him off-kilter. He’s grateful that they have to stop at the secretary’s desk before going in — it gives him time to blink the gray spots out of his eyes.

Zack chats with the secretary while they wait to go in, asking after details of her personal life that they’ve apparently talked about before. Cloud tamps down a flicker of envy at how easily Zack makes friends, at how relaxed he looks. The feeling is nothing new. He figures it’s easy to look relaxed when you’re 6’1” and wearing a 1st Class uniform. Commander Hewley was also Zack’s mentor when he first joined SOLDIER, so it’s likely not the first time his friend has waited outside this office or talked to the woman at the desk.

A familiar wave of inadequacy rolls in to lap at his boots.

 _Count to three,_ he reminds himself. _Turn it into doing what it takes to get to where he is._

“The Commander will see you now.”

Zack gives the secretary a wink, then turns to Cloud, his eyebrows raised as if to ask _are you ready?_ Cloud squares his shoulders and nods.

“Alright, let’s go.”

Commander Hewley is sitting at his desk, head bent towards the dozen or so missives and files covering the glass surface. He’s a big guy, bigger than Zack, with salt-and-pepper hair and a stern face that’s lined from years of training and hard work. Badges of honor and awards for exemplary service are framed and hung on the walls alongside photos of him shaking hands with the President and other world leaders. It’s exactly what you’d expect the SOLDIER Commander’s office to look like.

Except for the potted plants. Cloud did not expect the Commander’s office to have so many _plants._

It’s been a long time since he’s been surrounded by something so green and vibrant. After the dullness of the hallway it's practically blinding. He forces himself not to squint as he salutes.

“Sir,” he and Zack chime in unison. The Commander looks up and nods.

“At ease,” he tells them, then gestures them forward.

“SOLDIER 2nd Class Strife,” he begins, picking up one of the electronic files on his desk. Cloud gives a short “sir” in reply, and the Commander looks over at him, appraising. After a pause that feels like an eternity, he looks back to the screen in front of him.

“Recruited from the Shinra Infantry Division at 19,” he reads. “Excellent marks on all your entry exams. Graduated from the Academy in record time, a 3rd Class by 21, promoted to 2nd Class at 22.”

Another pause. Cloud keeps his eyes pointed straight ahead. He knows what the Commander is going to say next. He’s heard it a million times from the other officers.

“How old are you, Strife?”

“24, sir.”

Commander Hewley’s mouth thins as his eyes float over a section of screen.

“Your records show that you’ve applied to take the 1st Class exam eight times in the last two years.”

The results of those eight exams hang unspoken in the air between them: _Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed._

Cloud’s jaw tightens. He swallows in a vain attempt to loosen it.

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s a mandatory three-month cooling period for anyone requesting to take the exam again.”

Meaning he had put himself through hell as often as they would allow it. And he kept failing anyway.

“Yes, sir.”

The corner of the Commander’s mouth twitches. Cloud barely registers it. It’s taking everything in him to keep his cool.

_One. Two…_

The Commander sets the file aside. “At ease, Strife,” he says, even though he’d never ordered Cloud to attention. Realizing it’s the Commander’s way of telling him to relax, Cloud forces his muscles to unwind one by one.

_Three._

“Have a seat.”

Cloud looks at the chair in front of him. Protocol dictates that lower ranks always stand in the presence of their superiors. He sends a sideways glance at Zack for reassurance and immediately regrets it. His friend is wearing the same tiny smirk as the Commander. He decides he’s going right back to the Combat Sim after this. He needs to shoot something.

Cloud sits, and Commander Hewley considers him for a moment before speaking.

“Why’d you join SOLIDER, Strife?”

“To serve the Company, protect Midgar,” he answers, the lie sliding off his tongue the way he’s practiced a million times.

The Commander clearly doesn’t buy it. “And that sense of duty is what made you take the 1st Class exam as many times as you were allowed in the last two years?”

Cloud can sense the amusement rolling off Zack behind him. He makes a note to punch him as soon as they leave, then nods at the man staring at him from the other side of the desk.

“Yes, sir.”

A minute passes, with Commander Hewley staring him down, trying to find a seam that will crack, but Cloud doesn’t give him the satisfaction. Not even Zack knows why he keeps putting himself through all of this, why he’s still trying for a promotion after two years of failed attempts. His reasons are his and his alone, and they’ll stay that way. Thankfully, the Commander realizes it’s a lost cause and moves on.

“I’m sure SOLDIER 1st Class Fair has already told you why you’re here. The attack on Reactor 1 last night has prompted the need for increased security within the Company, particularly for the Department of Energy. SOLDIER has been tasked with providing security detail for certain staff within the Mako Power Division.” He pauses, raising his eyebrow at Cloud to make sure he’s following. Cloud nods, and the Commander continues.

“I’m assigning you to an employee within the Office of Energy Efficiency. You will be the primary agent on this assignment, though a second agent will handle the late-night watch.” Commander Hewley catches Cloud’s eye and gives him a poignant stare. “I say ‘agent,’ 2nd Class Strife, because for this assignment you are not simply a bodyguard. You will be at your post, attentive and at the ready, from the minute they leave their home in the morning to the minute they lock their door in the evening. The Company is taking these threats very seriously. Do you understand?”

Cloud wants to blurt out that of course he does, he’s been assigned to security details before, it’s not difficult, how different could this one be? But the way the Commander is looking at him tells him to stop and think.

He’d wanted a chance to prove himself. Something that could go on his record that would tip the scales — and the exam scores — in his favor. A way to reach 1st Class. A way to finally —

“Yes, sir,” he says. “I understand.”

Something flickers in Commander Hewley’s eyes before he nods. It reminds Cloud of the looks Zack gives him sometimes. Like he’s proud of him.

He knows he hasn’t earned it. Not yet. 

“While there will be significant increases in the visible security presence on Company property, the President and the Directors have requested that certain employees be protected in a more covert fashion. I’ll leave it up to you and your commanding officer to determine the logistics of your cover.”

“Who will I be reporting to for this assignment, sir?”

Zack steps into view and gives Cloud a lazy 2-finger salute off his brow.

“Yo.”

Commander Hewley clears his throat. “Don’t make me regret my decision, 1st Class Fair.”

Zack steps back into a lax attention. “I won’t, sir. You can trust me.” Glancing down at Cloud, he adds, “I’ll make sure 2nd Class Strife has everything he needs to successfully complete this assignment.”

The Commander seems pleased with that. “Good. Now, as for the employee you’re assigned to.” He picks up a different file, flipping it open so that the screen turns on. He holds it out to Cloud, who stands and reaches across the desk to take it.

It’s a miracle he doesn’t drop it after he sees the ID photo.

“Tifa Lockhart, Chief Scientist in Sustainability,” the Commander is saying, but his voice is drowned out by the white noise rising in Cloud’s head.

He hasn’t seen her in 6 years. Not since he left Nibelheim. He stares at the image on the screen in front him, searching for any clue that it’s a coincidence, that it’s a completely different Tifa Lockhart and not the girl he knew back home. He stares and stares, but there’s no mistaking those eyes. It’s her. He knew from a glance. How could he not? She—

How long had she been Midgar? How had he not known? He had no idea she worked for the Company, she swore she never would, not in a million years, not after what happened —

“—Fair will be taking you to meet her as soon as you’re prepared. Strife? Are you listening?”

Zack puts a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, you good?”

Cloud blinks, blinks again. Forces himself to close the file, _one, two…_ then nods.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Both men are giving him concerned looks. Zack’s standing close, like he’s prepped to catch him in case he passes out. The embarrassment from that alone is enough to snap Cloud out of it. He straightens into attention, levels his chin, and Zack steps back. Commander Hewley’s face relaxes, but there’s still a tightness around his eyes.

“If you don’t have any questions, you’re dismissed,” he says.

Cloud shakes his head. “No questions, sir. Only…” He swallows, meeting the Commander’s eyes head on. “Thank you, Commander, for this assignment. I won’t let you down.”

The Commander only nods, but as he and Zack snap to attention and salute before turning to leave, Cloud is a little more certain that the look he saw before was something like pride.

Which is unfortunate, he thinks, following Zack back through the hallways to the elevator, because there’s no cause to be proud of him. The gray is downright oppressive after the greenery in the Commander’s office, but it’s fitting, really. It compliments his mood.

Zack is talking about the things they’ll have to prep before they leave, IDs he’ll need, equipment, personnel briefings, but if he notices that Cloud’s not paying attention, he doesn’t mention it. And Cloud’s grateful for that, really, because he has other things on his mind. In the time it takes the elevator to slip down to the 49th floor, he’s doing something he’s never done before in the entirety of his career: contemplating desertion

Desertion is treason. Treason equals life behind bars. Unless you’re SOLDIER. If you’re SOLDIER and you go AWOL, that’s not only treason, it’s theft, too. Because SOLDIERs — and the mako treatments they take — are Company property. Desertion doesn’t end in life behind bars for SOLDIERs. It ends opposite a firing squad.

But as the doors of the elevator slide open, Cloud weighs all of that against being Tifa Lockhart’s personal bodyguard and decides that deserters get the better deal.


	2. Anxiety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Everyone is Very Stressed Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to all the beautiful people at Final Heaven and Once Upon A Star for their endless support. Y'all are the best.
> 
> Please enjoy!

Tifa considers herself a clean and organized person. She likes her spaces to be neat, with everything in its place. Her mom always said that a cluttered room meant a cluttered mind — if you surround yourself with disorder, your thoughts will follow suit. Keeping her home orderly keeps her head clear. If her apartment is clean, then there’s nothing for intrusive thoughts to root themselves to. It means they can’t grow out of control, into tangles and thickets that snag and trip her. It means she can’t be trapped in them.

When she gets back to her apartment after breakfast with her dad, she drops her jacket and her bag and keys on the floor and leaves them there.

It doesn’t matter, she thinks as she slides down the door to join them. She was a mess before she walked in.

Tifa clenches her eyes shut and shoves the heels of her hands against them, pulls her knees to her chest, curls into herself like she’s waiting for the blow of a boot to her stomach. Something’s trying to claw its way up her throat. It might be a sob. Maybe a scream. She holds her breath to keep it down, holds it until she's red in the face and her pulse is banging against her eardrums. Coming up for air means all her thoughts will rush back in with the oxygen; if she can hold it for just a bit longer, if she can starve the bramble growing in her head —

Eventually though her lungs act on their own and she has no choice but to suck in a ragged breath. In that instant the thing in her throat manages to break free, but she doesn’t recognize the wretched sound as hers. She can feel more like it churning around and instead of trying to hold them in by holding her breath she does the opposite: she lets herself hyperventilate. Only for five seconds. Five long, painful seconds, but it’s enough time to give her body what it needs and for her to get a grip. When those five seconds are up, she pulls her hands away from her face, curls them into fists, and presses them into the floor at her sides. She stares straight ahead and wills her body back into order, back under her control.

Flattening her palms against the laminate, Tifa focuses on erasing as much space as she can between the floor and her skin. She imagines herself pushing it away from her. She is stationary, strong, solid. To her, it’s the ground that yields. She presses down like she’s moving the entire Planet by herself, just her hands, her arms, her shoulders, every muscle in her taut — and when she feels like she’s pushed it far enough, she plants her feet and stands.

A deep breath in. A long, slow breath out.

Tifa picks up her jacket and hangs it on the pegs by the door. Her key ring goes next to it. She pulls her phone from her bag before she sets it on the entryway table, then toes off her shoes and tucks them beneath it.

Another deep breath, and her head finally starts to clear. She needs it to be. She has a lot she needs to figure out and very little time in which to do it.

A bodyguard… complicates things.

Tifa runs a hand over her hair then tucks it behind her ears. To keep herself from pacing she goes to the living room and sits on the couch. She turns her phone over and over in her hands, mirroring the way she’s turning over her options. There aren’t many.

She stares at her phone screen. She needs to call Barret and tell him about the bodyguard. She can’t help anymore. It’s too big a risk.

Tifa’s jaw clenches as she lets it all sink in. Everything she’s worked so hard for is now circling the drain. 

When she’d chosen to come to Midgar five years ago, it was for one reason only: Shinra. It was Shinra’s reactor that had sucked the life from the mountains around Nibelheim and turned the grass to dust. It was Shinra’s mako that leeched into her mom’s bones and poisoned her blood. The Company would never admit to it, and the doctors would never confirm. Tifa had been too young to understand at first, but the older she got, the more she realized just how wrong it all was.

Shinra had killed her mother and bribed the doctors to call it a ‘genetic predisposition.’ Shinra had kept the town fed and watered while they drained the Planet dry beneath their feet. Shinra had shackled her father to the reactor with hush money disguised as bereavement pay and a raise.

Tifa had grown up surrounded by ghosts because of the Company and its greed. She’d come to Midgar to make them pay for what they’d done.

The irony makes her mouth twist. They’re paying for it, all right. Just not in the way she’d imagined.

She took a job with Shinra because she thought she could take them down from the inside somehow, but her position within the Company is a sham. She knows it and so does everyone else. Shinra controls the continent because it controls the mako. The whole process — extraction, refinement, distribution. As long as there’s mako energy, the Company reigns, and that means mako as a resource needs to be limitless. That's what the Office of Energy Efficiency and Sustainability is for. It exists to ensure the Planet never runs dry. But her job — looking for back-up plans in case the mako ever does run out — is only for show. It’s an illusion meant to appease people who would dare speak out against the benevolent Company and benign Mako Energy.

People like Barret. Like Jessie and Wedge and Biggs and the other members of Avalanche. Enemies of Midgar. Terrorists. People she shouldn’t know. People she should be turning in this very moment because she’s a Good Citizen and a Good Employee.

But Tifa is neither of those things. A Good Citizen wouldn’t have stood quietly among their neighbors as a reactor went up in flames one sector over. A Good Employee wouldn’t be funneling their position’s meager budget into the pockets of the organization hell-bent on tearing the Company down.

“Complication” is a massive understatement.

Tifa unlocks her phone and pulls up the keypad to dial. She’s not supposed to call Barret directly. All contact with Avalanche is supposed to go through Jessie and 7th Heaven. Biggs only made her memorize this number in case of emergencies. This has to count, right?

She punches in the number and holds it to her ear. There’s no guarantee Barret will answer. What if she didn’t memorize it correctly and she just dialed the wrong number? But after the third ring it connects, and though no one speaks on the other end of the line, she knows someone’s listening.

“It’s Tifa,” she says quietly. She chews on her lips and waits for a response, some kind of acknowledgment or confirmation that she’s not speaking into the ether. When none comes, she hurries on.

“There’s a complication. New security. Bodyguards for DOE.” She winces at how specific that statement is, but she’s not sure how else to make the urgency clear.

“I’m being watched.” It’s a whisper this time. “I can’t —” She closes her eyes. “I don’t know what to do. I need to talk to you.”

No sound comes from the other end. Tifa holds her breath so that she doesn’t miss anything by accident, but nothing happens. After a few tense seconds, the line goes dead.

She pulls her phone away and stares at it, hoping the ridiculous happens and Barret will call her back right away. But she knows better. He won’t. He has more pressing things to worry about, like covering Avalanche’s tracks after they blew up a reactor.

She groans and falls back against the sofa cushions.

“Shit.”

The remnants of her earlier panic are still clinging to her edges. Everything feels so tenuous, including her. A few rounds at her punching bag should burn it off.

She’s halfway off the couch when her phone rings. Her heart is lodged in her throat and pounding like a fiend when she looks at the screen. She doesn’t recognize the number; but then again, she wouldn’t — they never call from the same number twice.

She fumbles for the answer button and brings it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Ms. Lockhart?” A man’s voice, bright and friendly, but not one she knows. Not Barret. Her heart isn’t quite sure what to do with that information and continues to pound.

“Yes, this is. May I ask who’s calling?”

“My name’s Zack,” the man says. “I work for the Department of Public Safety. How are you this morning?”

She blinks. She hadn’t expected the Company to be so prompt about it. _Shit._

“I’m well, thank you.”

“Good to hear. I’m sure you’ve received the notice issued by the President this morning regarding the new security protocols…?”

Tifa starts chewing on her lip again. The man’s words are all business, but his voice is upbeat, like he’s grinning on the other end of the line. She wonders if he’s going to be her watch dog. He certainly sounds like a puppy.

“Yes, I have.”

“Good. I’ll be overseeing the agents assigned to you. We’d like to get everyone up to speed and set up as soon as possible given the severity of the situation. I know it’s sudden, but that means today.”

He actually sounds sorry about it.

“I don’t have any plans to go anywhere this afternoon, so I’ll be home, Mr. —”

She can practically hear him wagging his tail. “Just Zack. How does 3 o’clock sound?”

He knows that she doesn’t have much of a choice, but she appreciates the façade. “Okay, sure. That sounds good.”

“Excellent. 3 o’clock then.”

The call ends. Tifa sets her phone on the coffee table and goes to her bedroom to change into some workout clothes. Her anxiety is full throttle again. She directs it all at her punching bag until a quarter after two, showers, changes, and then sits on her sofa and waits for the firing squad to show.

* * *

“Y’know, it’s okay to be nervous.”

Cloud tenses and shoots a glare towards the driver's seat. Zack’s watching the road with a straight face, but since Zack’s poker face isn’t that good, that means that he’s being serious.

He hates when Zack is being serious.

“I’m not nervous,” he snaps, but realizes too late that he crossed his arms while saying it. Shit.

“I didn’t say you were. I just said it’s okay to be.”

Cloud resists the urge to slouch down into his seat like a child, but there’s no preventing the petulant tone in his voice when he grumbles, “What are you, my mother?”

Zack’s shoulders shake with a laugh. “No, I’m your big brother. That’s only 3rd-tier. Mom nagging is 1st-tier.”

The silence grows heavier the longer Cloud refuses to ignore the set-up. Zack’s practically vibrating with whatever punchline he’s holding in, though, so Cloud sighs and takes the bait. “So what’s 2nd-tier?”

“A girlfriend, duh.”

Cloud groans and looks out his window as Zack busts out laughing. The groan isn’t just for the bad joke. The word ‘girlfriend’ has his gut turning in panic. Not that Zack needs to know that. Cloud can just pretend he’s motion sick.

On a city road. In a car going 30 miles an hour.

He lets himself slouch in his seat. Fuck it.

He’s had zero time to prepare himself for this assignment. Sure, he and Zack spent a few hours going over all the ins and outs of this kind of job: studying maps of the neighborhood, locating the security cameras already installed in the area and where to put more, the apartment that he and the night agent would be staying in for the duration of the assignment. But then they had to go over the personnel file the Commander had handed Cloud during their meeting, and that definitely hadn't done his nerves any favors. Opening the file and seeing her face staring back at him...

He hasn't seen or spoken to Tifa Lockhart since he left home to join SOLIDER six years ago, but he's never forgotten her. She's burned into his memory -- dark hair loose around bare shoulders, chocolate-cherry eyes, legs for miles. All he has to do is close his eyes and he can picture exactly how her mouth curled at the corners when she looked at him, like she knew something he didn't. 

Six years later and that mouth still wrecks him every time he sleeps.

Cloud slams the lid back down on that particular box and hopes like hell that Zack doesn't notice how he shifts in his seat.

If her staff ID photo is anything to go on, Tifa has only gotten more beautiful, but a lot can change in six years. He certainly has — he’s not the same scrawny 18-year-old that left her for Midgar. Sure, he’s never going to be as big as somebody like Zack, who’s built like a brick shit house and puts on muscle just by looking at the free weights, but he’s just as strong. The mako showers did their work. No one could look at him now and think they’d have an easy fight. Nobody would even try.

But he isn’t First Class like he promised her he’d be. What if it’s not enough?

Cloud huffs a laugh, dragging his hands over his face. He needs to get a grip.

 _Quit acting like a kid,_ he tells himself. _You told her you were going to be a SOLDIER. You are. So fucking act like it._

He chews on that, repeating it to himself over and over, until he’s straightened in his seat and staring resolutely out the windshield.

Tifa lives in one of the smaller neighborhoods in Sector 7. As they round the corner onto her street, Cloud starts playing back what he learned in the briefing this morning, mentally tagging every alleyway, every streetlight. There’s a coffee shop on the corner that looks promising. He has a feeling he won’t be getting much sleep during all of this. He wonders if she likes coffee, maybe he could bring her some…?

He grits his teeth. _Keep it together._

By the time Zack parks the car in front of her building, his jaw is sore. The brick two-story has four identical units; Tifa’s is the one on the top right. Cloud can’t see through the large window facing the street from where he sits; the thin afternoon sun is slanting against the glass. That’s a good thing. Keeps her safe. It doesn’t stop him from staring at it as he gets out of the car, though, hoping for a glimpse of her.

Zack comes around the car, tucking the keys into his pocket and following Cloud’s eyes up. “You ready?”

_Fuck no. Not in a million years._

“Yeah,” he replies.

It’s 3 o’clock on the dot when Zack rings the buzzer at the building’s front door. The sound kicks off a pounding in Cloud’s chest and he realizes he’s holding his breath. Then the panel buzzes and a voice comes out and his heart stops.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Ms. Lockhart? It’s Zack.”

A pause. Cloud can picture her frowning, maybe biting her lip.

“Come on up.”

The door buzzes and Zack pulls it open, cocking his head at the stairs inside with a grin. “Let’s go, Agent.”

Cloud walks up the stairs like he’s on his way to the guillotine, dragging his feet but resigned to his fate. Every step brings him closer to the one thing he’s been avoiding for years, the only thing he’s ever wanted. He’s desperate to see her face and absolutely terrified that she won’t remember him. _Gods, what if she doesn’t remember him?_

 _Don’t be an idiot,_ he thinks, even though his panic has tripled. _Of course she will. She has to._

The universe can’t be that cruel.

They’re at the top of the stairs way too soon. Cloud considers telling Zack he left something in the car — his wallet, his phone, anything — but it’s too late. Zack smooths his hair and fixes the collar of his dress shirt; Cloud scrambles to do the same before Zack can catch him doing it. Then Zack’s knocking on the door, and everything in him tenses to the point of pain.

He might actually throw up.

The time between Zack’s knock and the door opening feels like an eternity. Then the deadbolt clunks, the doorknob turns, the frame groans as the door opens —

Zack is cheery when he says hello, asking if they can come in. Cloud can’t see her yet because Zack takes up so much of the doorway, but her voice has his heart hammering in his chest. He manages to count to three before Tifa steps aside and invites them in. Then she’s there in front of him, and his heart stops all together.

The picture in her file doesn't do her beauty justice. Cloud wants to stand there and drink her in, wants to relearn every feature of her face, sort out the small changes and apply them to the image of her he’s kept in his mind all this time.

He wants to ask her a million questions. He wants to know what she’s doing in Midgar, why she’s working for Shinra. He wants to ask how she’s doing, how she’s been.

He wants to grin because _holy shit,_ she remembers. He knows that without a doubt, because the moment she sees him her eyes go wide and her cheeks pale like she’s shocked to see him. It takes all his will power and then some to resist the urge to reach out and touch her, to confirm that she’s real, because _gods,_ seeing her feels like finding fresh water in the middle of the ocean. Her face is open, completely unguarded, and he watches a million different things that he’s not bold enough to identify pass over it before the shutters snap close.

The polite smile Tifa gives him is forced. It would be convincing to anyone else, but Cloud sees right through it. He knows her. Even after six years, he has no trouble deciphering the look in her eye.

She’s pissed, and he has no idea why.

He gives her a nod in response and steps past her into the apartment to stand next to Zack. Tifa shuts and locks the door before following them.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” she asks, stepping into the small kitchen. It's an open-floor plan apartment so she’s visible to both of them as she pulls a glass from a cabinet and fills it from the sink. “Water? There’s coffee, too, if you’d like. It’s from this morning but I can reheat it.”

Zack smiles and shakes his head. “That’s kind, thanks, but no. We have a lot to go over, I’m afraid.”

She nods, taking a sip of water as she joins them in the living room. “Sit, please,” she tells them, that smile plastered on her face as she perches on the edge of an armchair. It makes Cloud uncomfortable. He can tell something’s wrong. He wonders if it’s him, if she’s upset because he’s there. A weight like a stone drops into his stomach and pulls him under. Zack takes a seat on the sofa, but Cloud remains standing. He puts on his usual mask of indifference and looks out the window as Zack gets to it.

“Ms. Lockhart, I’m SOLDIER 1st Class Zack Fair. I’m the officer overseeing your security detail.”

Tifa nods. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Cloud glances over. Both of her hands are wrapped around the glass of water, her nails tapping absently against the sides. Nervous. He frowns to himself as Zack goes on.

“The Company wants to get these assignments set and operating as soon as possible, for the protection of the staff. The SOLDIER scowling at the window is 2nd Class Cloud Strife. He’ll be the primary agent.”

Zack is smirking when Cloud snaps his head around. He looks at Tifa and finds that she’s smirking a bit, too. _Shit._

“Pleasure to meet you, too.”

He nods at her, not trusting himself to speak. Her lips twitch up a bit more, but her face is unreadable. Something familiar twists low in his gut and he’s 18 all over again.

The universe is a bitch.

“Ms. Lockhart — may I call you Tifa?” She nods, and Zack’s shoulders relax a bit. “Thanks. Tifa, I’ll be as straightforward as I can. The Company wants to make sure that its employees are safe. With all these threats being issued against the Department of Energy, they decided that the best thing to do would be security details for critical staff. You fall into that category.”

Cloud sees her stiffen from the corner of his eye. “I’m not sure about that,” she protests, and he wonders if that’s why she’s upset: she doesn’t think she’s important enough to be watched day in and day out. She doesn’t want a bodyguard.

“The Company thinks otherwise,” Zack says. “That’s why we’re here.”

Cloud watches her as Zack goes on about the protocols and what to expect. Tifa’s shoulders get more and more tense as she describes her daily routines — when and where she buys groceries, the gym she goes to, every mundane detail — so that they can determine what will have to change for her and what can stay the same. Her grip on her water glass tightens, but nothing shows on her face. When Zack is charming, she smiles, and she asks all the right questions, but it’s obvious to Cloud that she’s biting her tongue. He can see the muscles in her jaw clench when Zack explains just how much Cloud will be with her. Apparently she hadn’t realized that it wasn’t a distance position.

“Your hours are his hours,” Zack is saying. “He’ll meet you here in the morning to drive you to HQ for work. He’s been set up with a temporary DOE ID, so he’ll be working undercover alongside you, and he’ll drive you home after your shift. Where you go, he goes.” 

Tifa’s eyes flick to his and widen in surprise when he catches them, like she hadn’t meant for him to notice, but she doesn’t look away. It’s the first she’s really looked at him since he walked through the door. It's hard to tell exactly what she’s thinking. Her expression is still closed, but after a breath or two he sees the tension in her shoulders slowly start to unwind. Her gaze drops, sweeping over him like she’s sizing him up, and she meets his eyes one more time before turning to Zack again. 

Zack wraps it up pretty quickly after that. Tifa pushes back against the decision a few more times, playing it off like she’s a waste of their time, that she’s not important enough for them to go to all this trouble. They all know there’s no point, but Cloud’s impressed that she still tries. When Zack stands, she does, too.

“Did you have any other questions before we head out?” he asks.

Tifa shakes her head. “No, I think you’ve explained it all pretty thoroughly.”

There’s a bite to her voice. Zack smiles and takes it in stride.

“If you think of any, don’t hesitate to call. You’ve got my number.” He turns to Cloud. “I’m gonna head to the car. I’ll give you two a few minutes to talk. Get to know each other. Meet me in 10?”

Cloud freezes, suddenly on high alert, but Zack just grins and tells Tifa goodbye. When he walks out the door, all the air in the apartment goes with him. Tension thick enough to drown in takes its place.

Cloud’s afraid to look at her. Fucking terrified. But he’s always been a magnet to her True North, and he can’t keep his eyes away.

She’s watching the door, her brows pinched. The silence is heavy between them. He needs to say something. Anything. He opens his mouth, but she beats him to it.

“He doesn’t know, does he?”

Tifa’s voice cuts through the space between them like a sharp knife. It lets a little air in. Cloud closes his mouth, breathes in, holds it.

“No,” he says.

Her frown deepens, but then she turns her head to look up at him. The tension in her doesn’t dissipate, not entirely. Cloud finds himself staring at her like he’d wanted to when he first walked in. He thinks she might be doing the same.

“You cut your hair,” she says, and he’s not imagining the way her mouth curls up. Cloud’s hand goes to the back of his neck out of habit.

“Yeah, they, um — they cut it the second I got to the recruitment building.” Tifa nods and her eyes fall to her hands. Watching her twist them together helps him find his voice. All the questions he’s had since he heard her name this morning come rushing up at once.

“Tifa,” he starts, his stomach doing backflips at how her name feels in his mouth. “What are you doing in Midgar?”

It’s the wrong question to ask. Suddenly she’s closed up and stepping away, and her forced smile reappears. Cloud opens his mouth to apologize, but she shakes her head, cutting him off.

“Cloud, it’s good to see you,” she’s saying, and he wishes she hadn’t said his name, because that makes whatever the hell is happening worse, “but I have some work I need to finish before tomorrow, so…”

He stares at her; she looks everywhere but at him. She’s dismissing him. It occurs to him that he should be angry about that. Part of him is. He hasn’t seen her in six years and he asks a totally valid question and she blows him off.

“Tifa —”

“I’ll walk you to the door, yeah?”

She moves past him, and Cloud has no choice but to follow. He has half a mind to put his hands on her shoulders and spin her around. He wants to tell her that he’s missed her, but she’s pushing him out the door before he gets the chance.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Tifa says, already closing the door on him. Then she pauses, chews on her lip, and looks up to meet his eyes. There’s an apology in them, bright and clear.

“I think it’s best that Zack not find out. About us. That we’re… friends.” 

He’s surprised she can’t hear the sound of his ribs breaking from the force of that sucker punch. It stuns him so much all he can do is nod while he tries to get his breath back. She closes the door and locks it and he’s left there in the hall. That’s it. He can’t even wrap his head around it. He has no idea what the fuck just happened.

Cloud blinks a few times, then shakes his head and starts down the stairs. She's right, he thinks. There's no reason for any of his superiors to know that they know each other. He doesn't need anything compromising this assignment. Getting promoted to First Class is more important than ever.

Of course, if Zack figures out that he has a long-standing and unrequited childhood crush on the employee he’s just been assigned to guard 12 hours a day, he’ll never hear the end of it. The last thing he needs is his "commanding officer" ribbing him about it through an earpiece every five minutes. It'd take a bullet to shut Zack up.

He hates that she's right. He wishes all of that had gone differently.

Zack's waiting in the car when Cloud walks out of the building. He knows he's about to be interrogated. He sighs and climbs into the passenger seat, already prepping the lies.

* * *

Tifa waits until she hears the building door slam before she lets herself slip down to the entryway floor. Her fingers dig into her hair and pull at the roots. Two panic attacks in the same afternoon really isn’t fair.

“Shit,” she hisses into her knees. “Oh, shit.”

The bodyguard isn’t a complication anymore. It’s a fucking catastrophe.

She hadn’t expected SOLDIER to be watching her. It’s even more absurd than the decision that she needed to be guarded in the first place. Tifa had answered her door expecting a puppy, and instead came face-to-face with a hound — tall and dark-haired and taking up most of the doorway. Zack was friendly and handsome, just as she’d imagined he’d be, but seeing his eyes had sent a chill through her. Bright blue and stunning, with a glowing green corona around his pupils. The mark of Shinra’s military elite.

Tifa honestly believed nothing else could shock her after that. Two seconds later she was proved horribly wrong.

She never thought she’d see Cloud Strife again. He’d left Nibelheim after he turned 18 to go be a hero and he never came back. Tifa assumed he’d made it into SOLDIER and forgotten about her, about the promise he’d made. Just one more thing Shinra had taken from her.

Seeing him in her doorway had been like seeing a ghost. It had felt like she was dreaming. He’d never looked at her like that before, not in reality. She only saw that hunger in his eyes when she dreamed.

Tifa groans. His eyes were different. They had that same green glow as Zack’s. It was completely unnerving, like he could see right through her. She remembers how Cloud watched her from the window while Zack explained how different her life was going to be thanks to Avalanche and their “threats.” His gaze had felt like hot lead on her skin. She could barely concentrate on the things she was being told. She had been on a knife’s edge, grinding her teeth harder and harder with every word Zack said, and Cloud had only made it worse. One glance in his direction — when she’d learned just how personal of a bodyguard he was going to be — had sent her muscles unraveling against her will. How was she supposed to keep secrets from eyes like that?

She’d been ready to collapse from the effort of keeping it together by the time Zack said they were leaving. Then he’d gone and told Cloud to stay behind for a few minutes so that they could ‘get to know each other.’

She supposes she’s grateful that Cloud had the decency to look as terrified as she felt after Zack walked out. It was almost reassuring that he knew there could be problems if Zack or anyone else found out that they knew each other.

She wishes she had pushed him out the door then and there. She never should have given him the chance to say anything else. She shouldn’t have given herself the chance. But she couldn’t help it. Despite all the fear and anxiety that had her whole body strung out like a kite string, she’d looked at him and said the first stupid thing that popped into her head. If she’d made him leave before that, he wouldn’t have asked what he did, and she wouldn’t have had to rip both of their teenage hearts up by the roots and stomp on them.

Tifa wipes her hands over her face and gets to her feet. She tells herself it’s for the best. She has to keep as much distance between Cloud and herself as possible if she’s going to survive this. It doesn’t matter that he looked at her like he missed her, or that he blushed when she brought up his haircut. He’s SOLDIER. Shinra. It’s what he’d left Nibelheim for in the first place. His loyalty to the Company is signed and sealed in the glow of his eyes. He’s the enemy, as much as that word makes her sick to her stomach. If he finds out about why she’s in Midgar, about Avalanche, he’ll turn her in. Even on the off chance that he didn’t want to, he wouldn’t have any choice.

She tries not to think about the way he looked at her before she shut the door in his face, but it’s already haunting her. She glances at her phone, wishing even harder than before that Barret call her back. 

* * *

Her phone rings around 2AM and she jolts awake. It takes her a second to realize where she is. She doesn’t remember falling asleep on the couch.

The number lighting up her screen is listed as “unknown.” She has it to her ear before she’s fully conscious.

“Hello?”

She thinks she might be dreaming at first, because there’s silence on the other end, but then Barret’s rough bass growls in her ear.

“Don’t talk. You ain’t out of this game, alright? You’re just changing pieces. You can still be useful to us. If the money has to stop, start sending information instead.”

“But he’s SOLDIER —” she blurts out, but he cuts her off with a harsh “quiet!” She winces.

“You been real helpful to our cause so far, Tifa. We appreciate that. But this fight ain’t over. Not even close. If you got SOLDIER watching you, then you need to find a way to turn it to our advantage.”

He leaves enough of a pause for her to feel like it’s okay to ask the big question. “What if I get caught?” she breathes, closing her eyes against the possibility and what it entails.

Barret isn’t the kind to mince words, and she doesn’t expect any overt sympathy from him. His voice is simply matter of fact when he replies, “Don’t.”

She takes a breath as the collective weight of the day’s anxiety finally collapses onto her. Even though he can’t see her, she nods.

“You’ll figure it out. Don’t call us again. We’ll find you when we need to.”

The line disconnects. Tifa rolls over and buries her face into the sofa. She was having a dream before her phone woke her up. She doesn’t remember what it was about, only that it made her feel safe. She wants to track the dream down and climb inside and live there, but it slips away, and she realizes she won’t feel safe for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I am not responsible for my actions.


	3. Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day One: Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d like to express my endless and undying devotion and gratitude to [spaceOdementia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceOdementia/pseuds/spaceOdementia), who graciously allows me to scream and shout and pull my hair out over this fic at her via text-chat. She's absolutely spectacular, a true goddess, please help me in telling her so, and go check out her work while you're at it because it's the bees knees.
> 
> Also want to give a massive shout out to the wonderful humans at Final Heaven and Once Upon a Star for their support and encouragement. This is an amazing fandom, thanks for letting me play in the sandbox with you guys.

Cloud presses the button on the apartment’s intercom panel at three minutes to 8:00. He’s got a to-go cup of coffee in each hand from the shop on the corner; his jacket pockets are stuffed with packets of sugar, sweetener, and an assortment of mini creamer cups (regular and flavored). He wasn’t sure how Tifa took her coffee, so he just grabbed some of everything.

The coffee was Zack’s idea. It’s supposed to be a “peace offering,” something to smooth things over after Tifa all but threw him out of her apartment yesterday.

 _“I get it,”_ Zack had told him in the car. _“She thinks she can take care of herself. I don’t doubt it, either — did you see the arms on her? I bet she could kick my ass. Hell, I’d let her.”_

Cloud didn’t disagree, but he kept it to himself. While he’d managed to convince Zack that Tifa was just irritated about being assigned a bodyguard, he had no idea how much of it was actually directed at Cloud. It needed to stay that way.

Shifting from foot to foot, Cloud waits for the intercom to buzz. All he gets is silence. _Maybe she’s still getting ready,_ he thinks, and presses the button again, careful not to tip the cups and spill. A few minutes pass, but there’s still no response.

“Come on,” he grumbles. He was supposed to get a key yesterday, but according to Zack it had gotten caught behind some inter-departmental bureaucratic bullshit. They’ll have it for him when he gets to HQ later this morning. That’s what they said, anyway.

He tries not to think of how stupid he probably looks waiting on the sidewalk. He hopes her coffee isn’t getting cold. He takes a sip of his and doesn't feel the slightest bit guilty about it.

The door still hasn’t buzzed.

Cloud is about to set her cup down to pull out his phone and give her a call when he hears footsteps on the concrete to his left. He turns his head and his fingers clench around the cups.

Tifa is jogging towards him. She’s dressed in a pair of running tights and a loose tank top with her hair tied back. The wires to her earbuds bounce and sway in time with her ponytail as her feet hit the pavement, but it stops abruptly when she sees him. Her eyes go wide and she almost stumbles. Cloud watches the surprise on her face morph into indifference as she catches herself and deliberately slows her pace to a walk, taking her time to close the distance between them.

Grinding his teeth, he counts to three.

“Good morning,” she says when she finally gets to him. She’s panting as she takes out her earbuds, her cheeks and chest flushed from exertion. Sweat glistens on her collarbones; he yanks his eyes away to keep from watching beads of it slip down her skin to disappear beneath her shirt.

“What the hell are you doing?” He doesn’t mean for his voice to come out so rough, but he’s pretty sure he isn’t imagining the way her breath catches after he says it. He files the sound away for later, despite knowing he shouldn’t.

There’s a split second of hesitation before she says, “I went for a run.” Her tone supplies the unspoken _obviously._

“Without telling me.” It’s a statement, not a question, but he wants to see how she answers. His hopes for a fresh start between them are rapidly disappearing.

She turns away to unlock the door, shrugging. “You didn’t ask.”

Anger flares up in his chest, followed quickly by astonishment. She was never like this when they were kids. There was plenty for her to be angry about back then, but in the rare moments that she showed it, it was always quiet and simmering. He doesn’t remember her ever lashing out. _Is it me?_ he wonders again. _Why? What did I do?_ He wants to ask what happened to her to make her so confrontational, but it gets burned up by his frustration. Zack asked after every detail of her regular routine yesterday and she never once mentioned morning runs.

Cloud steps around her to block the door, and she blinks incredulously up at him. Though he’s not much taller than she is, the door is a step above the sidewalk, and those extra few inches give him an advantage when he fixes her with a hard stare and growls, “You lied.”

It has the desired effect. Tifa freezes, her keys dangling mid-air. Her mouth opens, then closes, then opens again, and she looks so indignant that Cloud experiences a moment of triumph. Then her eyes narrow.

“I figured you already knew,” she retorts, her voice dripping with that fake politeness she’d turned on him yesterday. “Being my bodyguard and all.”

It’s his turn to blink in disbelief. He wracks his brain for a response but the only thing he can grasp onto is _why is she being such a bitch?_ He’s about to give in and say it out loud, but it must show on his face that he’s about to argue, because suddenly she’s rolling her eyes and sighing too loud.

“Look, can we move this inside? I don’t want to be late for work and I could really use a shower.”

Cloud officially short circuits after that, unable to handle how violently the sudden image of her in the shower conflicts with how pissed off he is. He barely registers it when she forces him aside with the open door and plucks one of the to-go cups from his hand. The realization that she took his caramel latte by mistake snaps him out of it just in time to catch the door and follow her in.

He’s opening his mouth to demand she switch him cups, because at this point the prospect of drinking a decent cup of coffee is the only light at the end of this very-fucking-long Monday morning, but she’s taking a sip from it as she starts up the stairs. Her expression melts into the first unguarded one he’s seen on her face since they locked eyes at 3 o’clock yesterday.

“Mmm,” she hums blissfully. “Caramel’s my favorite.”

Cloud pauses at the foot of the stairs, watching her ponytail sway as she climbs the steps. As soon as she rounds the corner of the first landing, he groans quietly and turns up his nose at the cup in his hand. Plain coffee is disgusting. He barely manages to tolerate the burnt shit they brew on the SOLDIER floor by adding as much sugar and cream to it as he can.

Something tells him that emptying every single packet and cup he’s got stashed in his pockets won’t make it palatable enough to deal with this day.

Tifa’s nowhere to be seen when he gets to the top of the stairs, but the door to her apartment is cracked. Cloud finds her in the kitchen, unbuckling her waist pack and not bothering to acknowledge him; his stolen coffee is sitting on the edge of the dinner table. He considers swapping the cups, but it’s a lost cause. He sets the cup in his hand next to the one on the table and looks around the apartment, trying to distract himself from the tension that’s swelled up between them, but his eyes eventually settle on her back. Her movements are stiff, her spine too straight, as she steps over to the fridge for a bottle of water. She’s ignoring him, he realizes. Pretending like he’s not there. His fist clenches.

_It’s best if Zack doesn’t know. About us. That we’re friends._

Her words sound over and over in his head. Of course there was more to it than that. He was just too naive to see it. It’s obvious now that she has no intention of treating him like anything other than a nuisance. She doesn’t just want to keep their past a secret. She wants to prevent there being a ‘present’ and a ‘future’ for them, too.

He shouldn’t be surprised. She’d made it clear enough yesterday that she didn’t want a bodyguard. He’s an unwanted accessory, something she has to put up with because she doesn’t have a choice. The anger from earlier flickers back to life. He doesn’t exactly have a choice, either. It’s not his fault that he was assigned to her; how could it be, when he didn’t even know she was in Midgar? It doesn’t matter that she would be acting the same way if she’d been assigned a stranger. That’s not the point. They’re finally together after six years apart and she doesn’t want anything to do with him. She’s shutting him out.

She’s changed, and the realization guts him.

Fuck the peace offering. Fuck their history. Fuck _her._ If she doesn’t want to be friends, if she wants to go back on their promise— His hands curl into fists at his side. Fine. _Fine._ If that’s the way she wants it, then that’s what they’ll do. The mantle of SOLDIER slips onto his shoulders like a weighted blanket, solid and smothering. Treating her with arrogant indifference will make getting through this easier, anyway. He can get his fucking promotion and move on.

A deep, empty space opens in the pit of his stomach. It feels a little like betrayal. He almost hates her for it.

“You can’t just go off and do whatever you want without telling anyone. That’s not how this works.”

Tifa snaps her head around. She doesn't get her indifferent mask up fast enough to hide her shock at the change in his tone of voice. She scrambles to cover it with a shake of her head, her eyes rolling back so far that he knows it’s forced.

“This whole thing is ridiculous.”

“The Company thinks otherwise.” It’s an unkind echo of what Zack told her yesterday.

Tifa shifts uncomfortably, then takes a long drink of water like she’s stalling for time. That’s twice now this morning that Cloud has had the upper hand and it makes him smirk, until she sets down the bottle and turns to meet his gaze.

“I can take care of myself,” she says, like she’s daring him to deny it. It’s an open acknowledgement of their shared history, but it’s also a challenge. There’s a sudden fire in her eyes, blazing hot, and it ignites something in his chest, burning up all the oxygen in his lungs. She’s holding herself like she’s ready to fight. Cloud finds himself more than willing to oblige.

When he steps into the kitchen, Tifa automatically takes a step back. The little puff of air that leaves her when she bumps against the countertop makes them both freeze in place. Panic flashes across her face when she realizes she’s backed herself into a corner, and Cloud watches in fascination as her composure starts to crack. He shifts forward another inch and she tries to step back, but there’s nowhere for her to go. He knows he’s staring, knows that he shouldn’t, not if they’re not going to be friends, but for some reason she’s panting now, like she’s still out of breath from her run; the wild look in her eyes makes his own breath catch. His fingers twitch at his sides, uncertain. His mouth has gone dry. He licks his lips to speak, but the sight of her tongue darting out to wet her own almost kills him.

He’s not sure he wants to fight with her anymore. 

“I know you can.”

It’s clear Tifa wasn’t expecting for him to agree, and it’s thrown her off. He moves closer without thinking, drawn in like a moth to the fire in her eyes, but this time she doesn’t try to move away. When she bites her lip, it takes every ounce of self-control he has not to groan. It doesn’t even matter that she’s glaring at him when she does it.

“I’m not a coward,” she says, quieter but still firm. Her eyes are locked with his, and there’s desperation mixing with the anger. Even though she’s pinned, she’s still fighting. 

“I didn’t say you were.”

Another unexpected blow, another gasp that sucks the air from both their lungs. There’s less than a foot of space between them now and it’s burning with heat. Cloud could put his arms out and cage her there if he wanted. It’s a dim thought, overshadowed by the way her chest rises and falls too quickly and the white-knuckled grip she has on the edge of the counter. He leans into her, and he thinks she might be leaning in, too. Heart thundering in his chest, he shifts, rests his hands on the counter beside hers, his thumbs a hair’s breadth away from her skin, and her eyes are slipping closed, lips parting — 

“I don’t need you.”

Cloud jerks back. The fire in Tifa’s eyes has died down to smoldering coals, but the depths of them are still white-hot and sear through him right down to the bone. Confusion and shock writhe in his chest, and he presses in once more, crowding her, close enough to feel the shudder of her breath on his chin. Fury holds him there like gravity. There’s no air in the inches separating them. Her mouth opens and his gaze drops like a stone to her lips. She sways. He grits his teeth.

“That’s too damn bad,” he growls. “Because you’re stuck with me whether you like it or not.”

It’s like pulling magnets apart, but Cloud manages to push away from the counter and step back. Tifa doesn’t move at first, just stares at him. The silence feels too heavy after the rush of his breath and hers filling the air. He ends up having to turn away, busying himself with his phone until he hears her bedroom door close.

He sits at the dinner table and puts his head in his hands, trying to catch his breath. The sound of running water hits his ears and he releases the groan that’s been jammed in his throat. He scrubs his hands over his face, across his eyes, and when he opens them they land on the forgotten to-go cups.

He reaches out and grabs the one closest to him, pries off the lid, and swallows down every last drop of cold bitter coffee like its penance.

* * *

Before Tifa had signed on with Avalanche, Barret made it abundantly clear that she was putting herself at risk. The list was long, but torture had been at the very top, just beneath death. She’d told him she was prepared for anything that Shinra tried to throw at her should it come to that. What could the Company possibly do to her that was more unbearable than the pain they’d already inflicted? Nothing could ever come close.

Except this. Being forced into a car and made to sit through an endless traffic jam alongside the man she just had an incredibly heated and sexually charged argument with not thirty minutes ago is beyond cruel, and Shinra is _technically_ responsible.

She glances over at Cloud. He’d put on sunglasses before he started the car so she can’t confirm it, but she has no doubt he’s staring straight ahead. He has both hands on the wheel, one wrapped around the top and the other resting on one of the cut-outs on the bottom. For all his hands look relaxed, she can feel the tension rolling off his arms and shoulders.

He didn’t say a single word when they left her apartment. He’d glanced at her long enough to see that she was ready to go, and that was the last he’d looked at her. She can’t decide if that’s a good thing.

Her fingers twitch beneath her thighs and she turns her attention to the cars around them. She tries counting the things she sees — how many red cars, how many electric poles, how many Shinra parking tags — in an attempt to focus on anything other than the man next to her, but it’s no use. Being trapped in such a small space with him after what happened earlier is making her too warm, making her skin feel too tight. She bites her lip harder, but the sharp pain of it only sends her mind careening down a cliff straight into _what if…?_

Tifa digs her fingers into the undersides of her legs. She will not think about that when she’s barely two feet away from him. She won’t. She’ll throw herself out of the car and off the overpass before she lets herself even start.

She needs a distraction. Music, or fiddling with the AC dials. She could pull out her phone and check emails or play a game, but she can’t bring herself to move. It feels like she’s in a soap bubble — too much disruption will cause it to burst. Breaking the silence would mean risking talking to him, and she’s not entirely sure she’s ready for that yet. She has no idea what would come out if she opened her mouth.

Knowing her luck, probably all of the sounds she’d forced down when he had her pinned against the kitchen counter.

She inhales a shaky breath and stares out the window. This is exactly what she’d been afraid of. She thought if she could keep him at a distance, if she could force him to forget how things had been between them when they were younger, then she’d be able to get through this in one piece. Her plan had been simply to treat him with indifference. If she didn’t acknowledge him, if she acted like he was a stranger, then it would be fine. Cloud would get the picture and keep it strictly business.

She hadn’t planned on being so harsh so soon. She knew she would get in trouble for not telling them about her morning runs, but she’d been selfish. She’d just wanted one last moment to herself. Her mistake had been relying on her memories of him. Cloud was late to everything when they were kids. She didn’t think he’d show up on time.

Tifa frowns at her reflection in the window. She should have known better than to assume he’d be the same boy he was six years ago. She can practically hear Barret’s voice grumbling in her ear: _a fuckin’ rookie mistake._ She just wishes she could have realized it some other way.

The boy he was six years ago would never have argued with her like that. He wouldn’t have looked at her like she was driving him insane. He wouldn’t have been so rough, so demanding, he was never like that before, when they— 

Tifa’s thighs clench involuntarily. Her shower hadn’t been nearly long enough. The urge to take care of the pressure that had built during their argument had been strong, but she knew her embarrassment would be even stronger. She’d never be able to look at him again.

Cloud mutters something under his breath and she starts. A panicked thought zips through her brain — _god, what if he knows?_ — but that’s impossible. She wills her heart to slow and glances his way. The fingers of his left hand have started tapping on the steering wheel. His brows are pinched above the rims of his sunglasses. Tifa looks around. Traffic is at a standstill. A quick glance at the clock tells her they might actually end up being late. 

The soap bubble swells and shudders, reacting to the disturbance his voice made.

She closes her eyes. _I can’t keep doing this,_ she thinks bitterly. She’d spent her entire run shoring up her resolve, using every drop of self-control she had to build what she’d thought were impenetrable walls — and he’d torn through them like they were tissue paper. She knows deep down that ignoring him was never going to work, anyway. Her heart was never in it to begin with.

So what now? What other approach does she take to keep her safe? To keep her sane? It’s her mother’s voice in her head that provides the answer, bittersweet as it is.

_Where are you manners, Tifa? It’s not polite to avoid conversation._

Right. Small talk, then.

“I usually take the train to work.” She keeps her voice light, trying to sound conversational.

Cloud’s hands clenching on the steering wheel is the only giveaway that he heard her. His throat moves with a swallow before he answers, his tone cold and professional.

“Trains are too hard to secure.”

She hums and looks out the window again. Her heart is pounding in her chest from nerves. She thinks distantly about how easy talking to him used to be, and how much she missed it after he left. Small talk shouldn’t be this difficult, but exchanging those two sentences felt like pulling teeth. Even so, it’s better than nothing.

“Most of the employees in my department take the train,” she continues, watching him from the corner of her eye.

His jaw tightens. “Not anymore.”

Tifa bites her lip again, but this time it’s to prevent the beginnings of a smile. She thinks of all the Shinra parking tags she’s seen on their drive so far this morning and how congested the highways are. She has to turn away to get control of her face. It takes longer than she thought it would.

The bubble wavers dangerously.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen traffic this bad. Have you?”

She says it as nonchalantly as possible, chewing the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Cloud’s lips purse into a thin line, the muscles in his jaw shifting. His fingers resume their tapping, but his shoulders drop a bit, and then he’s shaking his head and even with the sunglasses in the way, Tifa knows he’s rolling his eyes.

The bubble bursts with a crisp _pop!_ It doesn’t erase the tension, but it does create a little bit of breathing room.

She should say something else while there’s still space in the air to do it. She bites her lip, wondering what to say. Everything that comes to mind feels too forced, too fake. Her window of opportunity is closing; awkwardness begins to seep in around them. Her mouth opens and words spill out before she even realizes what they are.

“I’m sorry.”

Cloud tenses again, almost imperceptible, and then releases a long breath. She wonders if he’s been holding it this whole time. Hers is still trapped in her lungs.

He doesn’t respond. He’s waiting for her to continue, like he’s expecting an explanation. It hits her then just how much her behavior had hurt him. Guilt rises up her throat like bile. She hadn’t meant — but no, she had. She’d wanted to drive him away, wanted to make him think she didn’t care.

What a lie that was.

She can’t give him the truth. Even if she could, where would she even start? _Hey Cloud, I’m really, really sorry about being a bitch, but I’m actually a member of the group you’re supposed to be protecting me from. Surprise!_ It’s ridiculous and completely out of the question. He’d take her straight to the President’s desk and that would be the end of Avalanche, of her revenge, and most likely her life. She has no choice but to lie. There’s too much at stake.

The trouble is that she’s a terrible liar, unless it’s to herself. Omission or avoidance all together is the only reason she’s made it this far, but as much as she hoped against it, she always knew there was a possibility that one day she would have to do it outright. Jessie had coached her on how to survive an interrogation once or twice. The basic principle was to stick to the truth as much as humanly possible and change only the details that you had to keep a secret. Less chance of slipping up on your story that way.

Tifa mulls over all the reasons she’s on edge and sorts out the ones that are safest.

“I was upset,” she begins. “Shocked. About the Reactor bombing.” That isn’t a lie, not entirely. She’d known about the plan, of course, but hadn’t expected the amount of damage it would cause, the people it would hurt. She swallows down the lump in her throat and goes on.

“I was annoyed, too, about being told I needed a bodyguard. But you knew that already.”

There’s a huff of laughter to her left and she looks down at her hands.

“And then seeing you —”

The tension swells up as if she’d twisted the volume dial on the radio to max. It’s obvious what seeing him had done to her. Tifa takes a breath to steady herself.

“I didn’t expect it,” she says quietly, twisting her fingers. “To see you.”

Three truths, she thinks. Three honest reasons for her anxiety, three excuses for her behavior that he can believe, verify, relate to. Three truths to smother her shame for the lies she has no choice but to tell.

“Work’s been so stressful, and then the bombing — everything happened so fast. I took it out on you when I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

Cloud doesn’t speak right away. Tifa stares at him, looking for any clue as to what he might be thinking. There’s not much to go on. He’s completely still, but she thinks he looks less tense than before. She’s still waiting when traffic starts to move around them; Cloud presses on the gas, effectively ending whatever moment that was. She sinks into her seat, turning her eyes back to the cars in the neighboring lane. At least she can say she tried, even if it doesn’t turn out to be enough.

“Did you know anyone?” he asks after a while. It makes her start. That’s not the reply she’d been expecting.

“No. Not personally.” Just names, a few faces. Secondhand gossip. She swallows down the lump in her throat. “My dad knew them, though.”

She sees his fingers clench around the wheel.

“Your dad—?” His voice cracks and he clears his throat. “Your dad’s in Midgar?”

She cocks her head at him and frowns. “Yeah. He transferred here from Nibelheim after I was hired on.”

Cloud nods a few too many times and mutters, “Good to know.”

“He’s supposed to have a bodyguard, too. Do you know --?”

“No.” He glances her way — the first time he’s done so since they left her place. “Sorry.”

Tifa nods. “Okay.” She wishes he weren’t wearing sunglasses so that she could see his eyes. She misses them, despite how different they look now, despite how much damage they’ve caused her in so short a time. But it’s always been that way. His eyes have always burned right through her.

She settles back into her seat. The traffic returns to its normal speed and they lapse into silence, but it doesn’t suffocate them like it did before. It’s comfortable enough that she turns on the radio, tuning it to her favorite pop-rock station. She hums along, and once or twice she catches his thumbs tapping out the beat against the steering wheel. A tiny smile wedges itself into the corner of her mouth.

It’s not a victory by any means. Tifa’s not even sure that it’s a step in the right direction. More than likely she’s worse off now than she was when she woke up this morning. She doesn’t want to think about that right now, though. Right now she just wants to enjoy the remainder of the drive and commit every second of this ease between them to memory, because it has to end. The moment they step foot in Headquarters, he’ll go back to being SOLDIER and she’ll begin weaving together the most difficult lie she’s ever told. No matter how she chooses to treat him after this, he’ll be her enemy again.

She glances at Cloud one more time before he turns into the parking garage. All the tension from before has left him. He looks relaxed. Her eyes drop to his mouth and linger and she remembers how close his lips had been to hers, lets the memory of his heat envelop her for one breath, two… before she blinks and lets it go.

It can never, ever happen again.


	4. Rule Number One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mondays are the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Its me, with an almost-8k update after 3.5 months of nothing. I'm sure you're all very eager, so I'll keep this note short and save the thank yous for the end.
> 
>  **A/N:** This chapter is full of abbreviations for the various Shinra Company business offices and departments. Government/Big Corp is full of long departmental names and employees almost always refer to them by shortened versions, and this story will follow that rule. Here's a quick key for this chapter:  
> DOE = Department of Energy  
> OEE = Office of Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
> 
> Please enjoy.

Cloud has a problem with personal space. Namely, invading hers.

By the time Cloud puts the car in park, Tifa has finalized her plan for dealing with her new bodyguard. Since he’s going undercover as an intern, she’ll treat him like an intern. It’ll be easy enough — new interns are always tailing you, always hovering and demanding attention, and are almost always forced upon your office whether you want them or not — and Cloud checks every single one of those boxes. ‘Cloud the Annoying Intern’ is less likely to distract her, too. With that out of the way, she can move on to more important things, like figuring out how in the hell she’s going to explain him to her coworkers.

She’s unbuckling her seatbelt, running different scenarios in her head, when Cloud suddenly reaches across her for the glove box. She gasps and freezes. He’s taking up her entire field of view, close enough that she can smell his shampoo. Cloud realizes his mistake too late, but he doesn’t retract his arm; he gives her a sheepish look, his cheeks dusted with a trace of pink. 

“Sorry, I just need to—”

She wants to snap at him to get on with it, but she’s holding her breath and trying not to move. One shift from either of them and they’ll touch, and she’ll have to start building up her resolve all over again. The glove box clicks open and Tifa starts up her new mantra.

_Annoying intern annoying intern annoying intern —_

“Shit."

As quickly as he appeared, he’s gone again, and Tifa exhales. Cloud is back in his seat, attempting to pry open a small container; she frowns, wondering what it is, and goes to shut the glove box. Her hand freezes in mid-air when she sees the handgun lying inside.

“Leave it,” Cloud tells her. “I’ll grab it in a second.”

She doesn’t know why it’s so hard to pull her eyes away — it’s just a gun, it’s not like she hasn’t seen one before — but there’s something about how incongruous it looks tucked between the vehicle owner’s manual and a stack of fast-food napkins. Reality crashes down on her like a ton of bricks. Of course he has a gun. Cloud isn’t an annoying intern, he’s a SOLDIER and her bodyguard, assigned to protect her from violent extremists. There’s probably a dozen more weapons stashed around the car and possibly a few more tucked away in his clothes.

Her brain immediately starts calculating where the hell he could possibly be concealing deadly weapons in such a slim-fitting suit, and her whole body flushes as a result. She glances his way before she can stop herself. Thankfully, what she sees derails that dangerous train of thought before it can go any further.

“Um—?”

Cloud is inches away from his visor mirror, attempting to insert what she assumes is a contact lens into his eye. Judging by his expression and the steady stream of expletives spilling from his mouth, it’s not something he’s had a lot of practice with.

“What are you doing?”

His finger slips and he hits his eye too hard. Wincing, he grumbles, “Undercover, remember?”

Tifa nods, though it’s still not quite clear what he’s doing. A well-aimed jab finally hits the mark; Cloud clenches his eye shut, hissing “shit shit shit,” then blinks a few times before squinting in her direction. They’re colored contacts, she realizes, to hide the ring of mako around his pupils that mark him as SOLDIER. His lopsided gaze is more unsettling than the gun in the glove box — one eye still vibrant cobalt and green, the other now a dull slate-gray, like a winter sky.

Cloud fishes the other lens out of the case he’s set on the dashboard. “They would’ve killed me if I walked in there without these,” he explains, then gets to work on his other eye.

Tifa can’t decide if it’s amusing or painful to watch him struggle. She’s even more uncertain about the change to his eye color. Somehow it’s worse than when she first saw the mako in them yesterday, more alien. Then again, maybe it will make it easier to hold her own if he tries to stare her down again.

“So how do we do this?” she asks, once he’s gotten both lenses in. “Do we just walk in, or—?”

Cloud at least gestures at the glove box before he reaches across her again. Regardless, she freezes until he’s finished swapping the contacts case for the gun, and she doesn’t relax until it’s holstered and hidden beneath his suit jacket. He looks up and frowns.

“You okay?”

She nods, albeit a little too quickly. “Yeah, I’m fine. How do we—?”

“If it bothers you, I’ll keep it somewhere else.”

It’s really not fair for his expression to be so soft and understanding, but relief washes over her.

“Sorry, I don’t know why — I didn’t think I would—” Tifa shakes her head, unable to get the words out around the wad of nerves in her throat. “It’s not like I’ve never seen one. I was just—”

“Surprised?”

She nods again, sighing.

Cloud’s mouth quirks in reassurance. “Won’t happen again.”

“Promise?”

He stiffens, eyes wide as the smile vanishes from his face. What the hell possessed her to say that? She wants to snatch the word from the air and shove it back into her mouth the moment it leaves. It had just popped out, a reflex, and now he’s just staring at her, and all she can do is stare back, wide-eyed in panic. That wasn’t a line she was supposed to cross.

“Sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Cloud’s mouth works for a moment, and Tifa thinks that maybe it will be okay, that it won’t bother him and they can forget about it and move on, but then his jaw clenches shut. “It won’t happen again,” he repeats; his tone is the same, but his features are wiped clean. Completely blank, as if nothing happened.

A pit opens in her stomach as he busies himself with collecting his badge. She should probably be relieved. If she keeps it up, she won’t need “Cloud the Annoying Intern” as a tactic to keep him at a distance — he’ll stay away all on his own.

 _It has to be this way._ Tifa pushes away the hollowness and grabs her bag. _It’s for the best._

Cloud scrolls through his phone for a moment, then looks at his watch. “We do everything the way you normally do,” he says, voice flat. “Main lobby, security, elevator. We can even get coffee in the break room if you want. We don’t want to draw attention to the employees with personal security, so it’s business as usual.”

Tifa sighs, still embarrassed but immensely grateful for the change in topic. It’s what she’d been trying to think about anyway, before he’d ruined it. “How many employees have personal security?” She doubts she’ll get a direct answer, but she asks anyway. She’s too curious not to try.

Cloud shrugs. “It’s not important.”

It’s the response she expected. She amends her question. “How many new interns are starting today?”

He rolls his eyes, but doesn’t reply. Tifa frowns. 

“What do I tell everyone when I walk in with a new intern? The Office usually gets a heads up about that kind of thing.”

“You say ‘this is my new intern’ and move on.” He doesn't even look up from his phone. 

“Cloud, I’m being serious."

“So am I.”

“People are going to ask questions. They’re going to wonder why the Mako Division is suddenly full of interns.”

“Shinra’s a big company. No one’s gonna care about a bunch of new interns.”

“I think you’re wrong,” she snaps, all her earlier frustration suddenly bubbling up and over. “People _will_ ask questions, and I need to know what to tell them. I can’t go in there blind. What if I say the wrong thing and blow your cover?” He doesn’t reply, just keeps messing with his phone and then his watch, back and forth, until she stomps her foot and demands, “What the hell are you doing?” 

It gets him to respond, but not in the way she expected. Cloud lowers his phone and leans his head back; his eyes close and he takes a deep breath and then holds it, almost like he’s meditating. Tifa recognizes the posture — she’s utilized it plenty of times — but it’s strange to see Cloud doing it. He was never one to hold back as a child. What is it he’s holding back now? She realizes she might not want to know just before he lets go a long sigh. He opens his eyes, but doesn’t look at her.

“People see what they expect to see, Teef. It’ll be fine.” He goes to turn off the car but hesitates; in that split-second, he glances her way, too quick for her to read the look on his face. “I promise,” he adds quietly, and then he’s pulling the keys from the ignition with too much force and shoving open the car door, announcing, “Come on, we’ll be late,” as if nothing happened. As if he hadn’t just ripped the rug out from beneath her feet. As if he hadn’t just blown every scraped-together, unspoken ground rule sky-high.

Stunned, Tifa blinks once, twice, then gets out of the car to catch up with him — he’s already heading towards the stairs.

“Cloud. Cloud, wait up!”

His shoulders tense, but he stops. Thankfully she’s good at jogging in heels. 

“We need rules,” she says once she reaches him.

Cloud is looking everywhere but at her, his discomfort obvious. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t do that. You know exactly what I mean. Obviously this isn’t going to work unless we—” She searches for the words that won’t make the rift deeper. “We need to figure out what is and isn’t off limits to talk about.”

He does that thing again that he did in the car, the deep breath and the slow sigh. Whatever it is, it apparently helps, because he opens his eyes after a beat and says, “You’re right.”

Tifa can’t tell if he looks defeated or relieved by the decision; to be honest, she’s not sure how she feels about it, either. It doesn’t matter how much she pretends he’s the annoying intern — he’s still a complication, still dangerous. But if they’re going to survive this...

“Okay. So...”

“Rule Number One: We’re _not_ friends. Right?” 

Tifa winces. “That’s not what I—” She takes a deep breath. No, it’s not what she’d meant, but it’s what he had heard. His harsh tone is what she deserves.

“I think it’s pretty clear that that’s not going to work,” she says carefully. 

Cloud rolls his eyes and mumbles, “Y’think?” It takes a lot to keep herself from doing the same. Or worse, scolding him for acting like a child.

“I still think it’s best that no one knows about our...history.” His eyes flit to hers, and she was right about the colored contacts earlier — it’s a little easier to get through this conversation without being pinned by his normal eyes. “But that doesn’t mean we have to act like strangers when it’s just the two of us. We could—"

Tifa pauses, knowing that her choice of words could have massive consequences if she doesn’t pick the right ones. It’s like walking a tightrope — every word she says throws her weight in one direction or another. Avalanche, Shinra, Cloud — there are already too many ways to fall, and they haven’t even reached the building. She knows what she needs to say, but she doesn’t want to. It’s dangerous. It’s a huge fucking risk, and she knows it. But if she has to use him for information like Barret wants and keep him unaware at the same time...

_People see what they expect to see._

“We could maybe try and be friends again.” 

Cloud doesn’t respond right away. His wrong-colored eyes search her face, and she wonders what it is he’s looking for, but she holds her ground and doesn’t look away. Eventually, he nods.

“Yeah. Okay.”

“With boundaries,” she adds. They’re both very aware of how much boundary-crossing potential already exists, but saying it out loud will at least hold them both accountable. What happened in the kitchen earlier can’t ever happen again.

He goes to say something, then thinks better of it; even so, he looks like the cat that got the cream when he says, “Right. Boundaries.”

Reining in her desire to kick him in the face, Tifa looks at her watch instead. “Shit. We need to go.”

Cloud shoves his hands into his pockets, still looking far too pleased with himself. “Told you we were going to be late.”

Tifa glares at him and heads for the stairs. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“So much for Rule Number One,” he mumbles, but since he’s right behind her, she hears every word. The teasing lilt in his voice makes her pulse quicken. It’s infuriating, dangerous, but there’s no time to spare for it now.

Shinra Tower’s bright metal and glass exterior greets them once they step out of the stairwell and onto the main plaza. Seventy floors tall, it looms above them like a sleeping giant. On Tifa’s first day working for the Company, she had stood in this same spot, wobbling on brand new high-heels as every single bone in her body protested her being there. She had tilted her head up, up, up towards the sky, searching for the top floor but never finding it, and she thought about the fairy tales her mother had read to her as a child. Monster dens were supposed to be below ground and hidden away, not bright and shining and standing tall for everyone to see. People were meant to run screaming from gaping maws and rows upon rows of sharp bloody teeth, not flock around them. She had wanted to run that day, but her anger had given her the determination to step through the doors like everyone else.

A year and a half of employment has mostly numbed her to the terror of stepping into the demon’s lair, but this morning it’s as raw and fresh as it was that first day.

The main entrance is buzzing like a hive. Employees spill out the large glass doors and mill around anxiously until they realize that they have to join a queue. Tension pricks at Tifa’s skin before she even reaches the end of the line. She cranes her neck to see what’s causing the congestion and her throat closes: security has been increased. What had initially just been a badge-swipe is now a full-body scan, complete with metal detectors and bag-checks. Public Safety personnel stand every few feet along the line, and though security guards are always stationed at the entrances to HQ, the riot gear and rifles slung across their chests are new. A few of them even have dogs beside them. All the blood drains from Tifa’s face, but she keeps moving, and so does everyone else. The reactions from those around her are varied — surprise, frustration at being late — but despite the anxious undercurrent, no one complains. 

She swallows hard but smiles and nods politely as they make their way through the gauntlet. Cloud is a solid presence behind her, moving along the queue without a word, and even though it’s ridiculous, she’s relieved to have him at her back. For a brief moment, she pretends that he’s actually there to keep her safe from the security guards, not Avalanche — and then a dog barks nearby, and she’s shocked back into reality. Tifa hurries through the metal detector and hands over her bag; while a guard waves a wand around her arms and legs, she notices that the metal detector doesn’t go off when Cloud steps through after her. It’s enough to ground her again. The guards aren’t treating him any differently from the others, but they know who he is. They knew to turn the alarms off before an armed, undercover bodyguard could trip them. She doesn’t want to think about how they know; all she can think of is endless security cameras zoomed in on her face. As soon as the last guard gives her the all clear, she steps to the side to wait and get a grip on her racing heart. Before Cloud leaves the security line, a guard hands him a new ID badge that says “INTERN” in bright red letters, along with a New Employee Orientation binder. The badge reminds her of their conversation in the car, and she scans the lobby for other intern badges like his, for any sign of other undercover security, but nothing stands out. 

What she notices instead are more armed Public Security officers. They’re everywhere — at the lobby kiosks, the exhibit displays, even the doors to the restrooms. A glance up shows them at the railings of the second floor mezzanine and at the tops of the staircases. Blue and silver uniforms weave between staff hurrying to their offices, and aside from a few nervous glances, no one bats an eye at them. 

_People see what they expect to see._

“Ready when you are, boss.”

Tifa jumps. Cloud is at her shoulder, looking expectant. There’s no trace of mockery in his voice, no indication that he’s teasing her or being an ass. He’s apparently slipped into his cover. The gray wrongness of his eyes gives nothing away; she wonders what she would see there if they were still blue-green.

Probably a bright flare of _I told you so._

She looks away and takes a deep breath. “Right. Let’s go.”

The walk to the elevators feels like an eternity. Tifa has to summon all her discipline to keep a straight face as they maneuver through the crowd. Jessie’s voice rings in her ear with every step — _if you feel guilty, then you look guilty —_ but it’s a hard mantra to hold onto the further into the building they get. 

Everyone is talking about the bombing. 

There are plenty of staff raising their voices about it, about how Shinra won’t be intimidated by terrorists; how mako is a gift to humanity and how destroying reactors is akin to destroying civilization. People stop and ask to shake hands with the guards and call them heroes, thanking them for defending Midgar. She expected the regurgitated propaganda — staff trying to climb the corporate ladder are always reciting the Shinra Creed — but to hear it canted throughout the lobby like it’s dogma makes her sick to her stomach. Others talk about the potential for another attack. They worry and speculate about which reactor could be hit next, which Sector might draw the attention of ‘those monsters.’ And then there are the few who joke about what they’d like to do to an Avalanche member if they caught one, and the violence they daydream about is more than she can take.

Tifa digs her nails into her palm to keep from shaking. The condemnations crash over her until she can no longer separate the things she feels: anger at Shinra and the false reality they’ve spun; guilt for the lives she helped take, intended or not; fear at how easily violence is wished upon complete strangers. All of it tangles in her chest until she can’t breathe.

 _We’re doin’ this for the Planet,_ Barret had drilled into her, over and over, _and that means we’re doin’ it for everyone. Even the ones against us._ They would understand eventually. The ends would justify the means. 

_...Right?_

Stepping onto the elevator is a relief from the noise. Tifa puts on a smile and nods and murmurs ‘good morning,’ grateful that conversation is minimal. Since her office is on the 39th floor, she slips around to the back of the car so that she’s not in the way of others with earlier stops. Cloud follows and opens his binder without a word. Sighing, she leans against the glass wall and looks out to watch the horizon change from gray to brown as the elevator climbs the side of the tower. Every floor gained reveals more of the city and, eventually, the Wastes beyond. Taking the elevator has always been a bit of thrill for her. Maybe it’s because of her small-town roots, but she has to resist the urge to press her face to the glass like she did her first day and stare awestruck as Midgar stretched out around her. Above the 20th floor, though, the view becomes more wasteland than city, and the thrill immediately dies. The blight surrounding Midgar twists the knife in her heart every time she sees it. She could take the stairs instead — climbing almost 40 flights would probably hurt a lot less — but she doesn’t. Taking the elevator is how she keeps her anger from scabbing over.

_Shinra did this. Never forget it._

She’ll never understand how everyone in the elevator can turn their backs on the consequences of mako power so easily. Day in and day out, they step onto the lift and immediately face the doors. They know the barrens are out there — Tifa knows they do — but they choose to ignore it, and it makes her so angry. How? How can they act like those blatant scars aren’t even there? She has to remind herself that most Company staff are from Midgar, born and raised. They grew up in Shinra’s world. They’ve never known green that wasn’t the work of human hands, planned and pruned and orderly. Tifa hates them for their ignorance, but she pities them even more. Not one person around her has ever seen the colors of a spring meadow or stood beneath the sprawling branches of an ancient tree.

Someone bumps against her shoulder when the elevator pauses to let people out. When she realizes it was Cloud, she amends her headcount. _One person,_ she thinks, remembering their mountain childhood and scrambling over rocks and roots and creeks with him. Watching him from the corner of her eye, Tifa tries to line up those memories with the man next to her. Somewhere behind the suit and the muscles and mako-tinted eyes is the boy from Nibelheim, the one that meant the world to her. Or at least, he’s supposed to be — she tries, but she can’t quite get the shapes to match. All of the edges are blurred and too insubstantial to align.

As familiar as he seems, Cloud is a stranger. The thought hurts, even though it shouldn’t. She’s changed, too.

Cloud is seemingly oblivious to her and the chatter around them as he quietly flips through his New Employee binder. He doesn’t even blink when someone asks about him.

“New intern, huh? What department?”

Tifa’s heart races with sudden paranoia, but her manners are pasted on her face in record time. 

“DOE. Mako Division,” she replies. She doesn’t miss how people’s eyes widen or how they turn towards the conversation, and her panic fizzles out when she realizes why. No one can resist the opportunity to gossip, it seems, even after a tragedy. 

“He’ll be helping me collect data for a few ongoing Sustainability projects in the OEE,” she continues brightly. Curious faces immediately begin to fall. A bolt of irritation zips through her, and she presses forward. “We’ve made breakthroughs with a new refinement process, and we’re also in the preliminary stages of developing a new method for reprocessing spent fuel so that it can be used again, it’s really exciting—”

By the time the elevator dings, the would-be gossips are the first out the doors. Tifa bites the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. According to their badges, they all work a few more floors up. The car is significantly emptier after that.

“I told you they wouldn’t care,” Cloud mutters, the first and only sign he’s been paying any attention. Tifa huffs and rolls her eyes, annoyed that he was right.

“That was impressive, by the way.” His eyes are still on his binder. “Do I really get to do all that?”

Tifa lifts an eyebrow at him. “Do you want to?”

He turns another page.

“Not really.”

The elevator empties at the next stop, leaving the two of them alone. Tifa waits until the doors close before she sighs.

“Good. Because that’s not really what I do anyway.”

Cloud closes the binder and tucks it under his arm. He leans back against the glass, too, mirroring her, but the way he does it is so much more relaxed than she is. Lazy, even. Tifa wonders if this attitude is going to be a part of his cover. It’s so unlike how she remembers him.

“Then what do you do?”

Her irritation from moments ago spikes again; she tries to keep it from her voice but fails.

“Shouldn’t you know?”

All he does is shrug. There’s a hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth. It looks right at home on this new persona of his, but there’s a slight softness to it that she recognizes from her memories, and her heart stutters. To hide it, she straightens and faces the doors, blowing out a breath right before they open onto her floor.

“Yikes.”

Tifa agrees. The change in scenery from the glass elevator onto the 39th floor is abrupt, to say the least. Unlike the bright, shining exterior of HQ and the glowing modern lobby, the Department of Energy lives on a floor that is painfully bland — a world of beige hallways, gray carpet, and fake potted plants. Everything looks and feels and even sounds muted. It’s like the entire department was designed to drain your soul away while you worked, which was fitting, really, given the energy source they were working with.

“Come on,” she says quietly, and starts down the hallway to their left. “My office is this way.”

“How do you know?” he whispers back. Tifa snorts and bites her lip to stifle it. The hallway — and most of the floor, really — is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Even the muffled tap of her heels on the carpet sounds too loud. Cloud lowers his voice even more when he asks, “Where the hell are we?” but it still sounds like a shout. She shushes him and shakes her head.

He has a point, though, about wayfinding. Every hallway looks exactly the same; every door, practically identical. If not for the brass signs mounted on the walls, it would be impossible to tell the difference between the Office of Grid Operations and a custodial closet. It’s a dull beige labyrinth that is guaranteed to send a new employee wandering in circles for hours. Lucky for them, getting to her office is relatively straightforward. 

Just walk as far away from the elevators as you can, then turn right. 

The door to the Mako Energy Division is deceiving, made of frosted glass and dark brown wood, but after opening it with a badge swipe (and the keycard scanner always sounds like a screaming alarm versus a small beep), the beige monotony only gets worse. Cloud manages to keep any comments to himself as they walk through the maze of cubicles and cramped work spaces. The muffled clatter of keyboards and shuffled papers are occasionally broken by a cough or whispered conversation; Cloud’s ID badge clinks against his shirt twice before he does something to silence it. Tifa leads him past every aisle to the opposite end of the room and through another locked door that says “Office of Energy Efficiency.” It’s supposed to say “and Sustainability” too, but that part of the placard apparently keeps falling off. On the other side are more cubicles, but along the far walls are offices, including hers.

Realizing they’ve almost made it without being stopped by anyone, Tifa walks a little faster. They just have to get past the coffee pot, and —

“Tifa!”

_Shit._

She freezes and takes a deep breath before turning towards the two women standing next to the small kitchenette. Cloud, she notices, is wearing that same blank expression from earlier. 

“Good morning, Noriko, Beth.” Tifa nods at both of them. “How was your weekend?”

“Fine,” Beth answers politely, but Noriko gets straight to the point, curiosity written all over her face. 

“I didn’t know we were getting a new intern,” she says, then steps forward, hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Noriko, Energy Management Assistant.”

Cloud nods, but doesn’t shake her hand. He doesn’t introduce himself, either, and Noriko and Beth frown at him in confusion. Tifa is a little confused, herself.

“This is Cloud,” she says quickly. “Sorry, he’s a bit… shy.”

“That’s okay,” Beth chirps, “Happens to everyone on their first day. I’m Beth, I work with Noriko, right over there.” She gestures to one of the cubicles, her smile warm, but when Cloud just nods again and doesn’t turn his head, it falters a bit.

“Right, um…”

Noriko picks up her coffee mug and gives Tifa and Cloud a forced half-smile. “We’d better get to our desks. See you later."

“Bye.” Tifa waits for them to walk away before turning a stern look on Cloud. His face is still blank, but one of his eyebrows lifts the smallest bit, an innocent _what?_ She shakes her head and starts walking

They make it past the last row of cubicles before he leans in to whisper, “I told you.”

Tifa rolls her eyes. “Right,” she hisses back. “You scared them into not asking questions. Great idea.”

“I didn’t scare them.”

“Intimidated, then.” She lowers her voice as much as she can. “Could you at least _try_ blending in?”

He picks up his badge and uses it to gesture at his suit. Tifa considers punching him for one brief moment, but lets it go with a sharp shake of her head. At least they’ve finally made it to her office. 

“No, I mean — you’re making people nervous.”

Cloud crosses his arms and watches while she swipes her badge on the panel next to her door and punches in the keycode. “Am I making _you_ nervous?” he asks, and his voice is so low it makes her shiver. Her hand freezes over the doorknob. She doesn’t look at him. Can’t. Refuses to give him the satisfaction, because she knows he can see the flush climbing up her neck and she knows he’s probably pleased with himself for it and smirking about it, too. What is _wrong_ with him? Flustered, she tries to open the door, but the lock has timed out. She swipes her badge again, her fingers fumbling on the buttons; every beep is too loud, and when the lock flashes red it screeches at her. This can’t be happening. The back of her neck is hot. She’s too exposed, everyone can see her, stuck outside her office with a strange man and they’re very likely already talking amongst themselves about it. And Cloud, that asshole, he’s still smirking at her. Would it be too obvious if she asked him to stop? Would that be admitting that he’s right? Did HR take harassment complaints against assigned bodyguards?

“Sorry,” Cloud suddenly murmurs. “I didn’t mean to—”

The lock blinks green. Tifa wants to crumple to the floor in relief, but she settles for a shaky sigh and opens the door.

“It’s fine. Come in.” 

Her office is small compared to the others. Tifa’s mostly convinced it was a storage closet before her position was created. She has a dozen or more reasons why she should hate this tiny room — among them the deliberate separation between herself and the rest of the staff, and the lack of effort put into making it a functional office — but in truth, she loves it. In the belly of the beast, she managed to carve out a small pocket that she could burrow into. Her supervisor had let her choose her own furniture from the surplus floor; it had been an absolute nightmare getting it up here on her own (though a few custodial staff had taken pity on her and helped), and the desk and bookshelves took up most of the room, but at least it felt like hers.

Or, it _had_ felt like hers. Now, she’s not so sure.

She sets her bag down on her desk and looks around, staring but not really seeing. It’s surreal. Everything is exactly how she left it Friday evening, and yet all of it feels out of place. It’s as if a tidal wave had swept through over the weekend and washed away all the things that made the space familiar. Then she realizes — nothing in the office is out of place. She is. 

Tifa knew there would be no going back after the bombing. She’d just never stopped to think about what ‘after’ would look like.

“This is... cozy.”

A choked laugh breaks free from her throat; she bites her lip hard to keep it from dissolving into a full-on hysterical fit.

It’s her first day back to work after helping an anti-Shinra group blow up a mako reactor, and not only does she have to act like everything’s completely normal, she has to deal with Cloud Strife — her childhood sweetheart, the boy that had abandoned and forgotten her — standing in her closet-office in a dress shirt and tie, wearing a fake intern badge and a concealed firearm because he’s now her _bodyguard_.

What wormhole did she fall into? What alternate reality is this? Surreal doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“What?”

Tifa waves him off and scoots around to the other side of her desk, trying not to laugh. She has to focus on something else or she’ll lose it.

She points at the spare chair in the corner, the one meant for people she has meetings with — if she ever had meetings. “You can sit there. We’ll have to get you a table or something. A lap desk, maybe.”

Cloud doesn’t move at first. Tifa ignores him for as long as she can, turning on her computer and unloading the files in her bag into their proper drawers in the cabinet next to her desk — but she can’t stall forever. With a sigh, she looks up.

There’s a look on his face like a question, like he’s trying to puzzle her out. It’s the same look from yesterday, the one she ran from. She has to keep running, too, at least until she can come up with a good enough lie to tell him. 

“We should figure out something for you to do,” she says, hoping it will shake the questions from his mind. It works well enough.

“I _am_ doing something."

“Oh? And that is...?”

He spreads his hands, gesturing to their surroundings like that explains it. 

“Being your bodyguard.”

“Hm. Funny. I thought you were my intern.”

One blond eyebrow rises, but he doesn’t take the bait. She smirks. There’s something exciting about the opportunity to antagonize him. Payback, maybe, for making her so flustered this morning. For shredding all of her plans for how to keep him at a distance. _Fat chance of that now, anyway,_ she thinks, considering how little room there was in her office to begin with.

“You already scared my coworkers. If you want to be undercover as an intern, you should probably act like one.”

Cloud crosses his arms. “And how are interns supposed to act?”

“Not like they have a stick up their ass, for starters.”

His eyes widen; in the close confines of her office, Tifa can hear him suck in a breath. She hadn’t meant to say those exact words out loud, but it’s too late. The look on his face is incredibly satisfying, anyway. _Payback._

“What am I supposed to do, then?” His glare is sharp, but the colored contacts dull the edges.

Tifa stares at him unblinking for a moment longer before she turns to the bookcase behind her. Instead of answering, she pulls down one of her old textbooks: _Fundamentals of Mako Energy_ , a three-inch-thick monster that she had to carry around her entire freshman year of university. She doesn’t bother to hide her smirk when she holds it out to Cloud, who immediately scowls.

“I’m not reading that.”

“You will if you want to be convincing.” Tifa shoves the book into his hands; when he doesn’t take it, she lowers her voice and adds, “Sit down and read it or I’ll give you real work to do.”

Cloud’s mouth opens like he’s going to argue further, but it’s a lost cause — she’s right, and he knows it. Judging by the way his bottom lip juts out — gods, is he _pouting?_ — he doesn’t like it one bit. He _hates_ it. Tifa remembers how angry he was when he found out she had gone on a run without telling him. He’s supposed to be in charge. He makes the rules. She’s meant to do as she is told, so that he can do his job and keep her safe. Safe from an imaginary threat. If the entire situation weren’t so surreal, she’d almost feel sorry for him.

Cloud glowers at her, but eventually takes the book. She gives him her sweetest smile in return.

“You’re lucky I’m your bodyguard,” he mumbles, and Tifa wonders what he means by that as he tries to make himself comfortable on the chair in the corner. He won’t have much success, unfortunately. Tifa chose that particular chair from the surplus floor precisely because it was uncomfortable, figuring that if her peers were going to be petty, she might as well be, too. 

Maybe if he stops being a pain in the ass, she’ll get him a better chair. 

With Cloud occupied, she settles into her own chair and lets the Monday-morning autopilot take over. She opens her email, her spreadsheets, the 3D modeling program she uses for prototyping, and her music player, then gets to work. Her inbox is double digits, which isn’t surprising. Majority are from other OEE staff — reports, summaries, meeting agendas for the coming week — but a handful are addressed to the entire company, and it’s one of those that makes her stomach turn.

Tifa never watched the President’s press conference. After all that happened between early Sunday morning and now, there wasn’t ever a good time to pull it up. It’s what she tells herself, anyway; the real reason she’s avoided it is because she’s afraid. 

The all-staff email includes a link to a recording of the press conference. Her cursor hovers over the blue text. Maybe it won’t be that bad? But she knows what she’ll see in that video, and she’s not ready to face it. Not yet.

With a shake of her head, Tifa closes the email and pulls up the data from the computer simulations she set to run over the weekend. She’d begun preliminary tests on the potential energy output of hydrokinetic turbines last week and her supervisors would be expecting a report by Wednesday. Not that they would actually read it... 

As she pours over the first few pages, the bitterness that always accompanies her into the office gives way to the satisfaction she gets from promising test results and successful calculations. She hadn’t planned on falling in love with research — coming to Midgar had been about infiltration, about revenge. She was only supposed to learn just enough to get a job with Shinra so that she could work to take it down from the inside. But then she took her first course on alternative energy sources, and her intentions took on a new facet. She was just starting her internship in the DOE when Avalanche first made their presence known to Midgar. After months of protests that turned into riots, Shinra announced that they would create a new office dedicated to preserving the Planet. Tifa was offered the job because she was in the right place at the right time, but it was the best thing that could have happened to her. Though she didn’t want to admit it at first, it became clear early on that her plans would never work; she was only one person and had no power or influence. With this job, she can at least feel like she’s making a difference, that she’s doing what she came to Midgar to do. 

Her research makes her happy. Incredibly conflicted, but happy.

Tifa hums along with the music coming from her computer speakers, lost in the world of data points. It’s not until the chair in the corner suddenly creaks that she remembers she’s not alone.

Her eyes dart to Cloud. He’s hunched over in the chair, chin in his hand and his legs crossed with the textbook balanced on top of them. Once she’s over her initial shock — how the hell had she forgotten he was there? — she’s surprised to see his eyes steadily tracking back and forth across the pages. At first she thinks he’s just skimming to look busy like she told him to, but then he turns the page and keeps reading. Tifa blinks in surprise; she half-expected him to fall asleep. He sighs and shifts around, uncrosses and recrosses his legs in an attempt to get comfortable, but his attention on the textbook doesn’t waver. If she didn’t know any better, she would almost say he looks interested. 

Tifa turns back to her computer. Staring at Cloud is the last thing she should be doing. She pulls up another file from her project, one full of computer-generated models that she uses for test simulations, figuring that they’ll be complicated enough to hold her attention. Ten minutes later she realizes that she’s read the same proof a dozen times. Shaking her head, she hunkers down and tries again, but it’s no use. Her eyes keep drifting back to him no matter what she does.

 _15 seconds,_ she tells herself. _You get 15 seconds._

It’s the way his fingers sink into his hair as he holds his head up that catches her attention first, the way his body bends and twists to make himself comfortable in that gods-awful chair and the quiet intent on his face. She remembers late-night study sessions in high school and how he always sat like that for too long and ended up sore the next day. Her cheeks warm when memories of other late nights follow, but the clock is ticking. Ten seconds left — she lets her eyes wander over the sharp lines of his suit. With his jacket unbuttoned, she can just see the dark edges of the holster strapped around his back and shoulders; it makes his white dress shirt pull taut across his chest every time he lifts his hand to turn a page. Six seconds, and he absently tugs at the knot of his tie to loosen it. Her whole body flushes with heat.

This was a bad idea. A terrible idea. She isn’t supposed to stare at him like this. Rule Number One — there had to be boundaries. They had to be professional. It was _her rule,_ and now she’s the one breaking it. But with his tie moved out of the way she can see the hollow of his throat, just above the top button of his shirt, and it’s stupid, _she’s_ stupid, but there’s something about that small divot of skin that has her blood racing through her veins. Suddenly the office is too warm, and even though he’s six feet away, she feels crowded. It’s like an echo of earlier that morning — trapped in the corner of her kitchen with Cloud taking up all the space in the room, pinning her there. He’d been so close that she could have tilted her head only an inch or two and her mouth would have been right there, just above the knot of his tie. Tifa exhales a shaky breath, and there’s the smallest edge of a whine, and _fuck, look away, get back to work,_ but she can’t. She’s stuck, stalled on the memory of his heat, the flush on his cheeks and the green fire in his eyes as he’d loomed over her, the way he’d leaned in like he was going to— 

Her phone chirps a text alert, nearly sending her out of her skin. Tifa snatches it off the desk and ducks her head before Cloud can look up and see the state she’s in. Her face is blazing hot; to her mortification, so is the rest of her. As flustered as she is, whoever sent her the message is an angel for giving her a distraction. She wipes her palms on her skirt then unlocks her phone, and the fever raging across her body freezes into a cold sweat.

The phone number isn’t saved as a contact in her phone, but she knows the sender anyway. It’s the mobile for 7th Heaven. Hands shaking, Tifa opens it.

It’s an automated message — a reminder for a reservation at the bar, asking for final confirmation. Every text Avalanche sends from 7th Heaven starts this way. _“Reply Y or N to confirm your reservation.”_ They won’t start sending her things unless she responds with a _yes,_ to know that it’s safe to talk; even then, they send at least two other ‘automated’ messages to confirm that it’s her and not someone else, as if she doesn’t have her phone set up with as much security as she can reasonably manage.

Tifa’s thumb hovers over the keypad. Her head roars with mental whiplash; her heart can’t seem to figure out how to beat a regular rhythm. She doesn’t know what to do. She knows what she _wants_ to do — she wants to throw away her phone and shove Cloud out the door and pretend like this is an ordinary Monday. She wants to erase the last 48 hours so that the bombing never happened. No reactor explosion would mean no change to her routine, no bodyguard, no guilt trying to claw its way out of her chest. But she can’t have any of those things. What’s done is done. 

She lifts her head enough to look at Cloud. He’s watching her, just like she thought he would be. His eyebrows go up, a question — _You okay?_ — and she sighs and nods.

Tifa types ‘N’ and presses send, then puts her phone in the top drawer of her desk. It doesn’t make a difference if she responds to them now or later. She can blame the delay on being watched so closely; they’ll understand and appreciate her discretion. She just can’t do all of this at once. It’s too much, too soon.

Cloud’s mouth twitches up, and Tifa gives him a tiny smile in return, not caring one bit about whether she should or shouldn’t do it, whether she should or shouldn’t feel pleased when his grows in response. For now, she’s going to ignore all of it, consequences be damned. With a deep breath, she turns back to her computer and buries herself in data points.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been almost 4 months in the making and has been a journey for me as a writer. Endless thank yous to My Wives for their undying love and support and screaming over snippets and for encouraging me to keep going, even when I felt like ripping it all up (again); both [spaceOdementia](/users/spaceOdementia/) and [SKEvans](/users/SKEvans/) each get a first-born child for letting me sob in their DMs over the particulars of this chapter and the future of this fic; and to all the lovelies over at the Final Heaven and Once Upon a Star servers -- thank you for hanging in there with me while I got this out. 
> 
> Writing Is Hard, but y'all make it worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos, comments, curses, screams, or general flailing are all welcome!  
> Come scream at me on [tumblr](https://kotaface.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/kotaface027).
> 
> ~Kota


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